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Cheer Up: 



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BY 



CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS 




NEW YORK 

JAMES POTT & COMPANY 

1906 



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Copyright y 1906, hy 
JAMES POTT & COMPANY 



First Impression, September, 1906 






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PREFACE. 

WHEN the first book in this series was 
prepared and the time came to name it, 
I set down fifty names as titles, and out of those 
fifty I chose ''I've Been Thinking." It proved 
to be a good title for one reason if for no other, 
for it gave the critics a chance to get gay 
with me. 

Some said that after reading "I've Been 
Thinking" they wondered what I had been 
thinking about ;^ others wanted to know what 
connection my book had with my title; still 
others wondered whether I was sure I had been 
thinking, and altogether I felt that I had been 
a benefactor to the reviewers in making their 
labors comparatively easy — I speak advisedly, 
for I have been a reviewer myself. 

Now the time has come to name this col- 



vi P r e f a c e 

lection and I cast aside the obvious title, ^^I've 
Been Thinking Again" (for I haven't), and have 
decided to call it ^Xheer Up." This will also 
be in the way of a favor to critics, for they will 
say ^^Xheer Up' — the worst is yet to come — 
and duly follows the title." 

In reading the book, cheer up — it is not far 
to the last page and it is given to you to skip — 
in itself an act of good cheer. What so cheerful 
as little lambs who do nothing but skip? 

Cheer up. Society may let you in next 
month and you can stop climbing. 

Cheer up. You may yet pass without a 
condition. 

Cheer up. The mine in Alaska that seems 
extinct may yet flow filthy lucre. 

Cheer up. She may accept if you ask again. 

Cheer up. To be sure you've failed, but at 
least you're not a grafter. 

Cheer up. What if it was a girl? Isn't a 
good girl better than a bad boy? 



P r e f a c e vii 

Cheer up. Diogenes would have found him 
at the Capitol. I mean it. 

Cheer up. The canal will yet be built. 

Cheer up. Perhaps you'll pick a winner 
next time. 
. Cheer up. Remember San Francisco. 

Cheer up. Muck raking has its uses and 
the United States of to-day is better than was 
the United States of a year ago. 

Cheer up. Go to a poor man and borrow it. 
He's been there himself. 

Cheer up. Send it to another editor. 

Cheer up. And then maybe your congrega- 
tion will cheer up. 

Cheer up. He loves you still. That's the 
trouble. 

Cheer up. You may make a hit in the next play. 

Cheer up. They're beginning to believe in 
American art. 

Cheer up. He isn't handsome, but he has 
brains and he'll be good to her. 



viii P r e f a c e 

Cheer up. He isn't very brainy, but he's 
good looking and that's the sort of husband she 
wanted. 

Cheer up. He is not kind to her, but she's in 
the peerage. Still, you have my sympathy. 

Cheer up, and take what's coming to you. 
So saying, I hand you the book. 

Charles Battell Loomis. 



Cheer Up 



HE was born of rich but honest parents." 
That is the way the moral story of the 
future will speak of the hero. 

Riches have begun to bear a taint, there's no 
doubt of it. 

Why, I never have rich persons in my house. 
They wouldn't think of coming. 

I'm sorry for the children of the rich. The 
time is coming when poor children will refuse 
to sit by them in school and will point the finger 
of scorn at them and say, ^^His father is rich," 
and then some friendly soul will say, ^^Not very, 
is he?" 

^^Yes, very." 

And they will pass by the poor, little, rich 
boy and leave him to wish with all his heart that 



2 Cheer Up 

his father had thought of other things besides 
making money. 

We who are honest, I say, we who are poor, 
have been spared the heartache that comes to 
those rich people who read denunciatory edi- 
torials. We know why we are very poor. 
They know why they are very rich. 

If they would tell us a perfectly honorable 
way of becoming immensely rich so that we 
might help the poor we wouldn't mind seeking 
riches ourselves. But we have been told that 
no multi-millionaire can be honest and we are 
glad to believe it. It furnishes a delightful 
excuse for our pitiable poverty. 

But, mothers, don't be too hard on the rich. 
Remember there are sometimes mitigating cir- 
cumstances. Perhaps Mrs. Pluto Kratt wanted 
to remain poor and her husband wouldn't let 
her. Are you going to shut her and her chil- 
dren out of your home the same as if she had 
made the money herself? 



Cheer Up 3 

Let her join your circle. She can help the 
church — and the most tainted money in the 
world is purified and deodorized if put to 
charitable uses — and you may find that even 
if rich, she is a human being like yourself, with 
many of your most precious foibles. 

Be kind to the rich; the time is coming when 
they will need kindness. 

But the time is passing when riches alone 
shall bring honor. Soon great riches will be 
synonymous with dishonor. 

Be kind to the rich. 




WANCE upon a toime the poor was virry 
poor indade, an' so they wint to a rich 
leddy that was that rich that she had goold 
finger-nails an' was that beautifil that it 'u'd 
mek you dopey to look at her. An' the poor 
asht her would she give thim the parin's of her 



4 Cheer Up 

goold finger-nails fer to sell. An' she said she 
would that, an' that ivery Chuesdeh she did be 
afther a-parin' her nails. So of a Chuesdeh the 
poor kem an' they took the goold parin's to a 
jewel-ery man, an' he gev thim good money 
fer thim. Wasn't she the kind leddy, childher? 
Well, wan day she forgot to pare her nails, an 
so they had no thin' to sell. An' the poor was 
mad, an' they wint an' kilt the leddy intoirely. 
An' when she was kilt, sorra bit would the nails 
grow upon her, an' they saw they was silly to 
kill her. So they wint out to sairch fer a leddy 
wid silver finger-nails. An' they found her, an' 
she was that beautifil that her face was arl the 
colors of the rainbow an' two more besides. 
An' the poor asht her would she give thim the 
parin's of her silver finger-nails fer to sell. An' 
she said that she would that, an' that ivery 
Chuesdeh she did be afther a-parin' her nails. 
So of a Chuesdeh the poor kem an' they took 
the silver parin's to the jewel-ery man, an' he 



Cheer Up 



gev thim pretty good money fer thim, but not 
nair as good as fer the goold. Sure, he was the 
cute jewel-ery man. Well, wan day she forgot 
to pare her nails, an' so they had nothin' to 
sell. An' the poor was mad, an' they wint an' 
kilt the leddy intoirely. An' whin she was 
kilt, sorra bit would the nails grow upon her, 
an' they saw they was silly to kill her. So they 
wint out to sairch for a leddy wid tin finger-nails. 
An' they found her, an' she was that beautifil 
that she would mek you ristless. An' the poor 
asht her would she give thim the parin's of her 
tin finger-nails fer to sell. An' she said she 
would that, an' that ivery Chuesdeh she did 
be afther a-parin' her nails. So of a Chuesdeh 
the poor kem. An' did they git the tin nails, 
childher? Sure, they did not, fer the leddy had 
lost a finger in a mowin' -machine, an' she 
didn't have tin finger-nails at arl, at arl — only 
noine. 



cheer Up 



THE other day I saw a new advertisement. 
It represented a woman lying in bed with 
a telephone at her elbow, and the inscription 
was, '^Make your wife happy." 

Has it come to this, then? Are we to be open 
to calls from our distant friends even at night? 
Imagine a tired woman in, say, Cranfield, New 
Jersey, her day's work done, going to bed and 
sinking into a deep and restful slumber at ten 
o'clock. 

She has one of these telephone switches at 
her bedside, but as all her friends know her 
habit of early retiring, she is safe. 

A friend of hers is journeying westward, a 
friend with more money than brains, and it 
enters his head at Toledo to call up Mrs. 
Brown and tell her he's well. 

It is only nine o'clock in Toledo, and he 
reckons that she will be in the parlor playing 



cheer Up 7 

her evening game of solitaire — for Mrs. Brown 
is alone in the world. 

Lazily rising from his chair in his hotel room 
he calls up Central and asks for '^ 8 Cranfield " 
over in New Jersey. 

Mrs. Brown is blissfully dreaming when the 
exasperating tinkle of her bell is heard. 

She imagines fire, burglars and many other 
dreadful things and rises to a sitting posture. 

"Who's there?" she cries in panic fear. 

Tinkle, tinkle goes the bell, impelled by far 
distant hands. 

"Oh, dear! Some one is sick." 

She grasps the receiver and cries, "Who is 
it?" 

"Yes, this is Mrs. Brown." 

"Who?" 

"Mr. Birdkin? You want to see me?" 

"No, I don't want to see you because I can't. 
I'm too far away." 

"Why! Aren't you in your house?" 



8 Cheer Up 

'^No, oh, no. I'm in Toledo, Ohio." 

^^ Think of it— Toledo, Ohio." 

''Well, I'm in bed." (This very tartly.) 

''Oh, I beg a thousand pardons. Why — er 
— ^what are you in bed for at this time of day? 
It's barely nine." 

'^You don't mean it. Hold the wire and I'll 
get up. My clock must be wrong." 

Mrs. Brown doesn't feel comfortable talking 
to a man even as far away as Toledo when she 
has donned night's habiliments. She rises 
hastily and begins to dress. 

Arrayed in a kimono she takes up the receiver 
again. 

"That you, Mr. Birdkin? What did you 
want to say?" 

"Nothing in particular. Awful night, isn't 
it?" 

"Why, no, the moon is shining." 

"Wild storm here. Oh, by the way. Just 
happened to think. There's a difference of an 



Cheer Up 9 

hour in the time between here and Cranfield. 
So you've retired?" 

^^No, I'm up now. What did you want to 
say?" 

^'Hope you're well." 

^^No, I'm not. I need sleep. George Bird- 
kin, haven't you anything better to do than to 
rouse lonely women out of their beds to tell 
them it's raining in Toledo?" 

Hangs up receiver and preparing for bed 
again lies awake for an hour, while George calls 
up a lady in Denver, who is just sitting down as 
hostess at a dinner party, but makes her guests 
all wait while Mr. Birdkin says that it is raining 
in Toledo, and what is it doing in Denver ? 

No, the telephone is an impertinent and 
tactless interruption, day or night. 



lo cheer Up 



THE Dedlydul family, consisting of Mr. 
and Mrs. Dedlydul, Johnnie, aged six, 
and Mabel, aged five, are discovered sitting at 
supper with their guest, Mr. Percy Flage de 
Witt, the brilliant raconteur. 

Mr. Dedlydul — It has always seemed to me, 
Mr. de Witt, that the hospitable board lends 
itself more readily to diverting converse than 
any other place. As food for the body goes 
into the mouth, it should be accompanied by 
food for the mind. 

Mrs. D. — Very happily put. (To Mr. de 
Witt) — We have heard great things of your 
powers of conversation, Mr. de Witt, and I 
hope that you are in a mood to scintillate at our 
humble board. 

Mr. de Witt — I'm afraid that my powers 
have been overstated. You remember 

Johnnie — Mamma, my chair's sticky. 



Cheer Up 1 1 

Mabel — It's jelly he spilled last night. 

Mrs. D. — Hush, both of you. What were 
you saying, Mr. de Witt? 

De W. — Oh — er — it slipped my mind, but 
Johnnie's remark reminds me that once when I 
was dining out at the house of the late Chief 
Justice Waite, I asked him 

Mabel — Can't I have some more butter? 

Mr. D.— Hush! 

De W. — I said to the judge 

Johnnie — Oh, mamma, Mabel spilled 

Mrs. D.— Hush! 

Mr. D. (ponderously) — Your story of Chief 
Justice Waite reminds me of an occasion. It 
was many years ago when the railroads were not 
as well equipped as they are now. My father 
lived in the western part of the State, and he 
was a great stickler for etiquette — Johnnie, 
take your fork out of your hair — and one day in 
the dead of winter, when the traveling was very 
bad, we had the Bishop to dinner, and of course 



12 Cheer Up 

my father was anxious to make a good impres- 
sion — Take your fingers out of the butter, 
Johnnie. 

De W. — Johnnie evidently wished to make 
a good impression upon the butter. 

Mrs. D. — Very good. 

Mr. D. — Johnnie's table manners need mold- 
ing, Maria. 

De W. — He thought the butter needed it 
too, I suppose. 

Mrs. D. — You're very quick to seize an op- 
portunity, Mr. de Witt. 

De W. — One has to be quick, sometimes. 

Mr. D. — Your saying that, reminds me of 
an anecdote of General Grant in the 

Mrs. D.— Oh! Henry, tell Mr. de Witt that 
clever remark of Lieutenant Halton's. I'm 
sure Mr. de Witt will appreciate it. 

Mr. D. — If he hasn't heard it already; witty 
things travel fast. Have you heard Lieutenant 
Halton's clever bon mot ? 



Cheer Up 13 

De W. (interested) — No, I haven't. 

Mr. D. — Some one told him that Tennyson 
was no more 

Johnnie — I know more than Mabel. 

Mabel — You do not! 

Mr. D. — Children, will you keep quiet? 

Johnnie — Mamma, what makes Mr. de 
Witt's ears stick out so? 

Mr. D — Johnnie, leave the room ! 

De W. (pleasantly) — Not on my account. I 
like my ears better that way, Johnnie. I can 
hear better. Pardon me for interrupting you, 
Mr. Dedlydul. What did Lieutenant Halton 
say? 

Mr. D. — Really, the children annoyed me so 
that it's slipped my mind. 

De W. — One's mind does get slippery when 
there are buds of promise around. 

Mabel — What are buds of promise? 

De W. — They are generally peach crops that 
are going to be failures. 



14 Cheer Up 

Mrs. D. — Oh, how clever, Mr. de Witt! 

De W. — That reminds me of what Doctor 
Holmes said. 

Mrs. D. — Now, children, listen. 

De W. — In the Autocrat he says 

^ Johnnie — Must I eat this bread? It's all 
crusts. 

Mr. D.— Will you be quiet? 

Mrs. D. (confusedly) — I — I — think I re- 
member the passage. 

Mr. D. — Can't I help you to something? 

De W. (irrelevantly) — Thanks, no. I'm 
perfectly helpless. You remember what Dean 
Swift said of the shoulder of beef? 

Johnnie — Mamma, what's a soldier of beef? 

Mrs. D.— Hush! 

Johnnie — Oh, is he going to recite some- 
thing? Will he make funny faces? 

Mr. D. — Hush, and listen. By the way, if 
I may interrupt you for a moment, when I was 
a boy I went to school in Vermont. It was when 



Cheer Up 15 

abolition sentiment ran high, and every Wednes- 
day we had to recite a poem. My uncle 

Johnnie — I recited to-day at school. 

De W. — What did you recite? 

Mrs. D. — Johnnie, be quiet. Your father 
is talking. 

Johnnie (oblivious) — I recited At Midnight 
in His Guarded Tent 

Mabel — What is a gardy tent? 

Mrs. D. — Suppose we go into the parlor. 
Unless I can serve you with something more? 

De W. — Not anything, thank you. Well, 
this has been very enjoyable. We've had quite 
a talk between us, haven't we? 

Mrs. D. — Yes, the children were pretty good 
to-night. Sometimes they interrupt, as children 
will. 

De W. (gallantly) — Your children but whet 
the edge of conversation. 

Mabel — What is the edge of conversa- 
tion? 



1 6 Cheer Up 

Mr. D. (who has been waiting for a chance) 
— Well, as I was saying, my uncle 

Exeunt omnes. 

Curtain. 




THE other day I heard of a man who went 
on working after he had become a multi- 
millionaire, seeking his office at eight in the 
morning and working until five. 

The same day I heard of a farmer who died 
of hard work on his farm at the age of seventy- 
five. 

And I also heard about that time of a mother 
who devoted her entire time to her three sons, 
living for them and giving up all forms of social 
life that interfered with her care for them. 

Three poor slaves? 

No, three happy persons. 



Cheer Up 17 

The multi-millionaire was fond of the hard 
but exciting game of making his fellow-men 
yield him increase. 

The farmer was fond of the hard but to him 
interesting game of making the earth yield her 
increase. 

The mother was fond of the hard but delight- 
ful game of making her increase, increase in 
stature and mind and heart. 

A happy trio. 

Pity is not for them. 




THE 2.25 train on the Naugatuck road 
was working up the beautiful valley of 
that name. Several passengers in the smoker, 
oblivious of the scenery, whiled away their time 
by telling the most dreadful experiences that 
had happened to them. I sat where I could 



1 8 Cheer Up 

hear it all, yet took no part in the conversation. 
I was on my way to Torrington, near the end of 
the division. 

Said one of them, a drummer for a John street 
iron house, who was on his way to Winsted, the 
terminus of the road: 

^^ Three years ago I was traveling in Western 
Pennsylvania, and I put up for the night in a 
little one-horse tavern in an oil town. I am a 
sound sleeper, but in the middle of the night 
I suddenly awoke. Something was in my hand. 
The moon shed a white light on everything in the 
room, and I found that the something was a 
knife, reeking with blood. I cast it from me with 
a cry, and it fell, not to the floor, but on a soft 
object which turned out to be the body of a man, 
still warm. Who had done the hideous deed 
I knew not, but I realized that if I were to be 
found in the room with the dead man, I would 
be seized for the murder. I hastily dressed, 
and then, moved by curiosity, I opened the man's 



Cheer Up 19 

card case and took from it one of his visiting 
cards. I put it in my vest pocket, and from that 
day to this minute I had forgotten all about it." 

^^Let me see the card," asked the clerical- 
looking member of the party. The drummer 
handed the card to him. He read the name, 
turned ghastly white, and fell in a faint. By 
the rarest chance another drummer in the party 
had a flask of whiskey, and the man was brought 
around. As soon as he could speak he said: 

^^I have been permitted to live to this day 
that I might have revenge. The man who was 

so foully murdered in that inn was " But 

just then the brakeman called out ^'Waterville 
— change for Oakdale and Watertown," and 
the clerical-looking man hurried off the car. 

The drummer sat silent for a few minutes, 
and then beads of sweat burst out on his fore- 
head, and he said: 

^'I'd give anything to know the name of the 
man who just got off." 



2 Cheer Up 

^^ That's easy done. As it happens, I know 
the whole circumstances of that murder," said 
a gray-bearded man, who hitherto had not 
spoken. ^^I know the man who just got off, 
and I can well understand why you wish to 
discover his identity. His name is " 

^^Thomaston!" called out the brakeman. 

^^ George!" said the bearded man. ^^I came 
near missing my station." And he grabbed his 
bag and was gone. 

An ex-detective sat just behind the drummer, 
and he said: 

^'If I were still in the detective business I 
should have nabbed that man for the murder of 
the fellow in the Pennsylvania inn. And yet 
it is a lucky thing for you that he got off just 

now, because " Here a messenger boy ran 

into the train from the station platform and 
said : 

^^Is George Hemingway on this train?" 

^^ That's my name," said the ex-detective. 



Cheer Up 2 i 

He opened the telegram and immediately had 
a stroke of apoplexy. 

^^If I am not mistaken/' said the big, bluff 
man, a merchant from Ansonia, ^'this man was 
just about to disclose a secret that would have 
affected your whole life." This he said to the 
drummer, who, trembling violently, asked him 
why. 

^^When you know his name you will know 
why. That man is not George Hemingway, 

but " Here the train passed over a trestle, 

making such a noise that the name of the ex- 
detective was not caught by the drummer. 
Again the beads, the identical beads that had 
bespangled his brow before, appeared there 
once more, and in an agony of mingled fear 
and curiosity, he said: 

^^For Heaven's sake tell me and end this awful 



j> 



suspense.' 

^^Fluteville!" called the brakeman, and the 
Ansonia merchant rose and left the train. 



2 2 Cheer Up 

By this time my interest in the matter was at 
fever heat, and I determined to learn why the 
drummer was so torn by his emotions if he were 
not the guilty man. 

I was several minutes in making up my mind 
to speak, but at last I braced myself, and, 
assuming a stern, dictatorial tone, I said, 
suddenly: 

^^Who killed the man in the inn?" 

^^Torrington!" called the brakeman, in in- 
exorable tones, and I had to get off, for I had 
reached my destination. 




SCENE: Business man's office. Busy man 
seated at desk busily engaged in being 
busy. Enter female book agent. 

Female Book Agent (insinuatingly) — Good 
morning. I have here a little work 



cheer Up 23 

Busy Man (brusquely) — And I have here a 
good deal of work. 

F. B. A. (persistently) — But I'd like a little 
of your time 

B. M. (briskly) — Sorry, but I haven't any time. 

F. B. A. (cajolingly) — Don't you wish to join 
the crowds 

B. M. (tartly)— Not till I'm through my 
work, but don't let that prevent your joining 
them at once. The streets are full 

F. B. A. (despairingly) — Sir, can't I interest 
you? 

B. M. (crisply) — It's to my interest if you 
can't. I'm busy. 

F. B. A. (sympathetically) — So am I. That's 
the way I earn my living. 

B. M. (wearily) — But you bother me. 

F. B. A. (earnestly) — Join the ^^ Don't Worry 
Society." Make up your mind that you won't 
be bothered. Now, this little work shows you 
how to save money. 



2 4 Cheer Up 

B. M. (sapiently) — I know already. I'll 
avoid buying it. 

F. B. A. (sweetly) — I think that I am very 
patient. When you are through talking I will 
proceed. 

B. M. (politely) — Madam, I'll stop at once 
if you are sure that you'll proceed. Turn the 
knob to the right. 

F. B. A. (calmly) — My business is not com- 
pleted. 

B. M. (testily) — Neither is mine. 

F. B. A. (proudly) — The gentleman in the 
next office bought two copies. 

B. M. (enthusiastically) — That lets me out. 
I'll borrow one of his. Good-day to you. 

F. B. A. (pleadingly) — Please hear me out. 

B. M. (resolutely) —I haven't time, but I'll 

take great pleasure in seeing you out. Good 

day. 

(Sees her out.) 

Curtain. 



Cheer Up 25 

EXCEPT on extremely cold days American 
railway cars are overheated to a scan- 
dalous degree, being at least ten degrees warmer 
than is healthful. Now if the reason that Ameri- 
can men and American women come into these 
cars and keep on their coats and capes and 
wraps is because they like to be heated to the 
point of roasting, then are they salamanders and 
this is not for them. But if they are lazy and 
keep on their ulsters and paletots because it is 
too much trouble to remove them, then they may 
learn the practice of wisdom from one of the 
humblest of travelers, remove their furs and 
shawls and overcoats, and be comfortable. And 
if they are merely absent-minded and wonder 
why they dread the daily ride to and from their 
suburban homes, then let me tell them loudly 
that it is because they forget to take off those 
outdoor wraps that they would never think of 
wearing in their own living-rooms. 



2 6 Cheer Up 

To a nervous man whose blood circulates 
freely, the spectacle of seemingly sane men and 
women buttoned up in garments of fur or other 
heavy stuffs when the temperature is exploring 
the tube in the neighborhood of ninety degrees 
is one calculated to plunge him into an untimely 
perspiration, and yet there is not a day in the 
winter when such a scene may not be witnessed 
wherever there are steam or fire heated steam 
railroads. 

How can you stand it, fellow-passengers? 
And how can you run the risk of letting that 
little boy of whom you are so fond keep his 
heavy pea jacket on when you know perfectly 
well that as soon as he reaches outside air he 
will be at the mercy of that biting nor'easter, 
with nothing extra to cover his shivering, be- 
cause erstwhile superheated body? 

Disease stalks up and down the train like the 
vender of candies, crying in inaudible but none 
the less terrible tones: '^ Plenty of time before 



Cheer Up 27 

the train gets there to catch pneumonia, con- 
sumption, laryngitis and all the other unpopular 
ills! Keep your coats buttoned up while the 
brakeman hermetically seals the ventilators and 
runs the steam heat to the topmost notch!" 

To-morrow, when the doctor calls you will 
say, "I'm sure I don't know how I caught cold, 
for I have kept myself so warm." 

But your mortal enemy, the brakeman, could 
tell you. He and the fur wraps and that heavy 
ulster and the sizzling hot steam heat and the 
bad air and your crass idiocy all helped with a 
right good will. And if you escape pneumonia 
and have another chance to ride in the swiftly 
propelled infernos, do you think that you will 
remember what you have escaped and hang 
your little coat on the hook provided for that 
purpose? 



2 8 Cheer Up 

DEAR READERS: You may be my 
superiors in a thousand ways; you may 
be sweeter tempered, possessed of better mem- 
ories or wider learning or finer spirituality, but 
we have a common weakness — we always forget 
to inclose a clipping, or money, or a handker- 
chief, or whatever it is that we say ^^I inclose 
herewith." Don't we? Now why is this, 
gentle readers? You have good memories for 
faces or for figures or for stories; why do you 
fall down on so simple a thing as inclosing an 
article when you say you're going to? 

Think of how it vexes you when you are the 
recipient of a letter that says, '^I am inclosing 
herewith a little embroidered handkerchief as a 
birthday gift. I worked it myself and feel sure 
that you will like it." Only that and nothing 
more — no handkerchief. Or else it is, ^^I am 
sure that you will enjoy as much as I did the 
droll story which I have cut out and inclose. 



Cheer Up 29 

Please write me at once what you think of it, as 
to-morrow I am going to India to be gone seven 
years, and I want to get your opinion before I 
go." But the dipping is not in the envelope. 
And you are vexed, because you value your 
opinion of stories and would like above all 
things to tell your friend what you thought of 
his tale. 

Or worst form of all is the last : ^' I am sending 
you a check for twenty-five dollars in payment 
for that picture you sent me. Please acknowl- 
edge receipt." Of course you never needed a 
twenty-five dollar check as you need that one, but 
equally, of course, your friend forgot to inclose 
it. Don't blame him, however, for you would 
have forgotten it yourself. 

The art of inclosing is a lost art. Here and 
there there may be a man who can inclose when 
he says he is going to, but he is mighty scarce. 

The most exasperating form of neglected in- 
closure is when your correspondent says, ^^It 



30 Cheer Up 

is vastly important that you should know about 
the inclosed at once, so instead of copying it out 
myself I send you a cutting which I wish re- 
turned immediately. I hope it will reach you 
in time." 

There is nothing else in the envelope at first 
sight, and you open it to its widest extent, 
feeling all the while as if you had been cut off 
at the telephone just after some one has said, 

^^Your uncle has died and left " You are 

in an agony of curiosity, but you must possess 
your soul in patience until your friend finds 
the clipping and sends it in a later mail. 

Make up your minds, then, dear readers, 
while it is yet early in the year, that hereafter 
you will be inclosers. Put your inclosure in, 
even if you forget to write the letter. The in- 
closure is the raison d^etre of the matter. Don't 
leave it out. 

I am too old to learn this new trick, but with 
you there is yet time. Inclose. 



Cheer Up 31 

AS a married man I want to enter my protest 
against the senseless practice of house- 
cleaning. Cannot housewives see that the act 
is an admission of poor housekeeping ability? 
A well-kept house is clean. That is an axiom. 
And if it is clean, where is the need of house- 
cleaning? 

I am not the first man to cry out against this 
practice. I remember to have read numerous 
articles by the funny men of the press directed 
against this vice, but to me the affair has no 
funny side. Is it humorous to have to move all 
your belongings from one room to another in a 
vain effort to escape the deadly ravages of the 
housewife? Is it a joke to have to eat your 
meals on the gas-stove and do your writing on 
the stationary tubs while your wife and the 
maids are rubbing imaginary dirt from the din- 
ing-room and sweeping it from your study? 

A woman with the fever of house-cleaning 



3 2 Cheer Up 

upon her is not responsible for her acts. There 
is no woman living who is so sweet-tempered 
that she can go through an attack of house- 
cleaning without turning — her temper. There 
is no man alive who is so angelic that he can 
avoid giving his wife offense while she is under 
the fell influence of the national disease. Does 
a man tell you that he helped his wife put up 
or take down the dining-room stove without 
any hard words? Trust him not, he is fooling 
thee, as Longfellow was in the habit of saying. 
A soft answer turneth away wrath, but not 
when you are helping your wife take up the 
matting. She will bowl over your soft answer 
with words hard enough to drive tacks. If a 
young man, instead of trying to find out the 
quality of his fiancee^s temper by taking her to 
the theater and to evening parties, would visit 
her at her home when she and her mother are 
roaming unshackled all over the house in the 
last stages of house-cleaning, marriage would not 



Cheer Up 33 

be so lightly entered into, nor would divorces be 
so disgustingly prevalent. 

Nor is a woman to be blamed for becoming 
infuriated over the process of house-cleaning. 
A man may be in Wall street during a panic, he 
may be the overseer of a gang of incompetents, 
he may be the superintendent of an insane- 
asylum, but he will never have any experiences 
so trying to his temper as the useless but seem- 
ingly inevitable experience of house-cleaning. 

I picked up a paper this morning, and in the 
local notes was the report of an accident to a 
young woman. She had smashed her thumb 
while house-cleaning. Is a clean house worth 
a flattened thumb? Are spick-and-span rooms 
worth the alienation of a husband's affections? 

What is it to the minister that his wainscoting 
looks fresh and clean, when the style of his 
sermon has been muddied by many inter- 
ruptions? Why should the poet be proud that 
his wife has polished the legs of the piano and 



34 Cheer Up 

brightened the hands of the clock, when the 
feet of his poem have been so injured that they 
limp under the stern eye of the reviewer? What 
is it to the domestic man that his bedroom is 
sweet and fresh, while the wife of his bosom is 
hag-worn and soured by the process? 

House-breaking is less of a crime than house- 
cleaning. It is less insidious. It is attended 
with fewer hard words, with much less noise 
and displacement of dust, and it is accomplished 
by an avowed enemy of society instead of by the 
companion of your life-journey. And it is vastly 
more successful — from the burglar's point of 
view at least. 

I knew a man in Chicago who made a practice 
of never marrying until after his prospective 
wife had finished her annual house-cleaning. 
As a consequence, his marriages were singularly 
happy ones. 

But the most diabolic kind of house-cleaning 
is that form which attacks some women who 



Cheer Up 35 

have had generations of thrifty and neat fore- 
bears, but who themselves are anything but neat. 
With these women house-cleaning is an in- 
voluntary act. They go through the motions, 
they have all the symptoms in their most aggra- 
vated form; the husband eats in the kitchen; 
the wife's temper is lost beyond hope of a clew; 
and in spite of all, the house is not clean. These 
are like the dog who turns around thrice before 
lying down — he knows not why; or the hen 
brought up on a macadamized floor, who 
scratches as hard as did her ancestors in the 
garden. 

Women who in other respects are singularly 
open to reason, and whose minds are as pro- 
gressive as a game of eucher, will stand up for 
this habit with all the narrow-mindedness of a 
backwoods woman. Ask any woman of your 
acquaintance whether she believes in cleaning 
house, and she will look at you as if she thought 
your sanity in doubt. Then ask any married 



36 cheer Up 

man, and he will tell you that the vermiform 
appendix is not more useless than house- 
cleaning. With this difference of opinion be- 
tween the sexes, it is easy to fancy the bitter 
words that are laid to the credit of a couple 
that have been married sixty years, and whose 
house has been devastated three-score times by 
the whirlwind of house-cleaning. 

Spring would be the most delightful season of 
the year if house-cleaning were abolished. To 
the house-cleaner the odors of the woods and 
fields appeal in vain; sweeter to her is the smell 
of soap and patent cleansers. The tender grace 
of the adolescent maple leaves is as nothing 
while the walnut leaves of the extension-table 
need scouring. 

Happy is that man whose wife never allows 
her house to get dirty, for to him house-cleaning 
shall be unknown, and the passage of the lives 
of the twain shall be as calm and unrufHed as 
that of two leaves upon the bosom of a placid 



Cheer Up 37 

stream. And the address of that wife shall be 
found in the directory of the millennium. 




A CERTAIN young man had a father. 
And the father was an artist. And 
when the young man cast about to see what he 
could do to support himself in luxury, he de- 
cided to become a plumber. 

Now, this was a natural craving of his nature, 
for from his childhood he had put oflf doing 
that which he had to do. 

But his father, who was a successful artist, 
and therefore a hard worker, wished him to 
become a member of the same honorable guild, 
and he grieved that his son should lean toward 
plumbing. 

So he took him aside, and said : 

''My son, my father was a hard-working artist 



3 8 Cheer Up 

and his father before him, and I wish no son of 
mine to pursue so butterfly a trade as that of a 
plumber. We have always earned our bread by 
the sweat of our brows, and although bread 
has ofttimes been scarce, yet there has been a 
plenitude of sweat. Why depart from the tra- 
ditions of a long line by becoming a plumber?" 

And the young man made answer: ^^ Father, 
I have surreptitiously learned the trade of 
plumbing, and I find it to my liking. And its 
emoluments are great. I do not care for work, 
and the painting of pictures is hard work." 

But the young man was dutiful, and he 
studied art. And he became a mediocre and 
unsuccessful artist. 

For he painted like a plumber. 

Moral: A good many plumbers have been 
lost to the world. 



Cheer Up 39 

AN EGG that had lain in its nest for a 
whole day with nothing to do said to 
its mother, '^Mother, I am tired of staying here 
idle. The city is the place for an aspiring young 
ovoid like myself, and I mean to go there. In 
the city one can see something and be something, 
but here I am only referred to as 'that fresh 
young egg.'" 

And the mother hen sighed and said, ''My 
child, let well enough alone. I have heard of 
the temptations that beset one in a great city. 
The bloom of innocence is soon rubbed from 
a young egg and the end is ruination. Stay 
here and be hatched, and when you are a chicken 
if you are lucky enough to escape my feet in the 
first week of your existence you will find that 
the country is a lovely place in which to live." 

But the young egg was obstinate, and that 
night, together with some other eggs as fresh 
as itself, it went to the city. And for a few 



40 Cheer Up 

days it was as happy and virtuous as could be 
desired, but in the course of a few weeks it fell 
in with some loose eggs that lay around a corner 
grocery, and at last, as its mother had feared, 
the egg became bad and that was the end of it. 
Moral: The city is no place for fresh eggs. 




CHARACTERS: Frank Purson, Miss 
Gushe, and one other. (After the solo.) 

Frank Purson — Who was that? 

Miss Gushe — I don't know. Some vocal- 
izer. No temperament. 

F. P. — He might be covered with it and I 
wouldn't know. But I think that no singer can 
afford to be without it long, nowadays. Though 
a man have the voice of an angel and have not 
temperament, it profiteth him nothing. 

G.— Why, that's in the Bible, isn't it? 



Cheer Up 41 

F. P. — Something very like it. I wonder 
who it was that sang. I liked his voice. 

G. — Oh, it wasn't anybody in particular 
(listens). Oh, I heard Mrs. Chattington say 
it was Zhan Derewski of the opera. 

F. P. — I was right in liking him. 

G. — The dear man. Wasn't it lovely? Not 
so much the voice as the way he used it. What 
temperament! 

F. P. — Yes, he seems to have had a supply, 
after all. His temperament seems to grow on 
you, don't you think? 

G. — Oh, I do wish he would sing again. 

F. P. — Yes, so do I, now that I know who 
he is. 

G. — Oh, he's going to sing an encore. How 
adorable! (The man sings again.) 

F. P. — Ah, wasn't that delicious? (Sighs.) 
Oh, those Poles! They seem to be born with 
divine voices and charms of person that generally 
come only after much hard work. 



42 Cheer Up 

G. — I can never tell whether you are joking 
or not, you look so serious. Sometimes I think 
you don't really like music. 

F. P. — Oh, I adore it when so valuable a 
singer interprets it. 

G.— Oh, there's Mr. Dagby! Didn't Zhan 
sing divinely? What a lovely tenor voice. 

Mr. D. — He will when he sings. He's going 
to now. That man who just sang is a baritone. 
I forget his name — hasn't much of a one yet — 
pupil of Solfari. Now Zhan begins. Shh! 

F. P. (In a whisper) — I take back all I said 
about his temperament. Of course, he can't 
have acquired it if he's only a pupil. I like his 
voice, though. 

G. — I don't. He's positively an impostor. 



Cheer Up 43 

AN oyster, which had but lately left its bed, 
strolled into a barnyard on the river 
bank one hot July morning. And, being of a 
discontented temperament, it began to bemoan 
its lot. 

^^Why am I so little and homely and circum- 
scribed? Look at that proud and beautiful 
rooster. He has everything to be thankful for, 
whereas I have nothing." 

Even as he spoke a man came out of the 
house with an axe in his hand and cut off the 
head of the rooster. ^'You'll do for my dinner," 
said he. 

Said the oyster to a hen who was hiding under 
a burdock leaf, ^^Why, there is no ^r' in this 
month! Why was the rooster killed?" 

Said the hen, "Lucky oyster! you are safe 
all summer, but one month is as good as another 
to kill a fowl in." 

Whereat the oyster perceived that it had much 



44 Cheer Up 

to be thankful for. But its joy was of short 
duration, for a child who knew not the calendar 
came along at this juncture, and made short 
work of the bivalve. 




THERE is no doubt that this world would 
be a sightlier place if all advertisements 
were removed from the unresisting face of 
nature, and undoubtedly they would have been 
done away with long ago if it had not been for 
the sentimentalists, who are unwilling to disturb 
the ancient landmarks that their fathers erected. 
Years ago in a New England village a young 
man fell in love with a maiden. He used to 
meet her every evening at their trysting-place 
— an old rail fence on which in letters of white 
paint was traced the legend, ^^Hufland's Austrian 
Bitters are good for Dyspepsia." 



cheer Up 45 

It is probable that the young man did not 
once knowingly look at that simple sign nor did 
the girl, but there it was, a part of the scene, as 
much a part as the singing of the birds, the twit- 
ter of the crickets, or the rippling note of the 
^^ peepers." One evening when the crescent 
moon was silvering the dying day and little 
birds sang madrigals, he asked the maiden to be 
his wife, and his subconsciousness took in the 
words on the fence even as his ears listened to 
the whispered words that made him her accepted 
lover. 

The next day he parted from the girl and went 
West to seek his fortune. Other places, other 
faces — and pretty faces, too — and it is small 
wonder that his young blood was stirred by 
the comeliness of a Western maiden who was 
withal a flirt. Perhaps he wavered in his love 
for the^one in the East, perhaps he was merely 
thoughtless and sought to while away the lonely 
hours. But once when he and the young 



46 Cheer Up 

woman were out walking and admiring the 
beauties of nature he saw painted in white 
letters upon a venerable rock the words, ^'Hu- 
fland's Austrian Bitters are good for Dyspep- 



• 55 
sia. 



In an instant the scene of his betrothal came 
to him — the old rail fence, the pallid crescent 
moon lighting the dying day to its death-bed, 
the wheetling, whirtling swallows, the lovely girl 
with the cupid mouth — and he conducted 
the young Westerner to her door and parted 
from her with a lift of the hat that spelled 
^^ Finis." 

And always ^'Hufiand's Austrian Bitters" 
was his talisman. When hope declined and 
advancement was slow, he would go out and 
gaze on some tree that had been decorated by 
the magic words, and then he would go back and 
work with renewed vigor for the girl. 

At last he made enough to send for her, and 
she came out to him and they were married, 



Cheer Up 47 

and his wedding-present to her was a bottle of 
Hufland's Bitters, which the sensible girl valued 
more than she would have prized a necklace of 
diamonds. 

Years passed on, prosperous years, and the 
two were happy, but ever and anon vague 
longings stirred them, and at last they realized 
that they wanted to go and lean on the fence and 
read the old original sign. 

Let it not be thought for a moment that I am 
an advocate of out-door advertising, but mark 
the sequel. During the years that had passed 
since the girl had left her native town a Village 
Improvement Society had grown up that fiercely 
warred on defacements of nature and that went 
forth with destroying hands, and trees and rocks 
and fences that had lain under the spell of 
advertising letters were scraped clean and bare 
— perhaps hideously bare — who knows? Is 
not the change from a well-painted negro carry- 
ing a soup-tureen to a huge oval of scraped 



48 Cheer Up 

rock too sudden to be natural, and should we not 
imitate Nature in all things, even in our defense 
of her? 

Be that as it may, the young couple fared them 
forth to the place of their betrothal. Alas, the 
fence that had borne that magic sentence had 
been replaced by a rustic one and the cherished 
words were gone forever! Such a shattering 
of illusions, such a demolition of fondest fancies, 
such a tearing down of sweet memories is seldom 
seen. With wild cries the young couple fled 
again to the West, and the place of their bring- 
ing up shall know them no more forever. 




IT was autumn, and in front of a house 
stood a maple tree whose leaves had turned 
to a scarlet so intense that one could scarce look 
without winking. And by its side stood a twin 



Cheer Up 49 

maple whose leaves were like fairy plates of 
gold. 

And within the house were two sisters, stran- 
gers in that land. And one said to the other, 
^^See, sister, the newly risen sun has touched 
the trees in front of our dwelling, and they 
are beyond my power to describe, so beautiful 
are they." 

But the other one was engrossed in house- 
hold cares and she did not come to the case- 
ment. She said, ^^Of such a scene have I read 
in the poets. It must be transcendent. I wish 
that I might see it, but I have that which I 
would finish, and a joy that is anticipated is 
trebled." 

Then the other, who sat at the casement and 
gave herself up to the feast of color that lay 
before her, said, ^^I could never imagine such 
beauty. I am glad that mine eyes can see it, 
and while it lasts I will watch it, that no change 
in the falling of the sunlight and shadow upon 



50 Cheer Up 

it may escape my notice. Seeing it I can re- 
member it, but if I saw it not I could not fancy 
such a scene." 

So the one at the window waited and watched 
while the one within worked and anticipated. 
And when the clouds dimmed the sun's splen- 
dor, yet were the trees of surpassing loveliness, 
and when the sun shone upon them they were 
like glimpses of heaven. And ever the scar- 
let deepened and the yellow grew yet more 
golden. 

The day passed on, the evening fell, and with 
the casting of night's shadows there came a wind 
that despoiled the trees of their leaves. 

In the morning the woman who had antici- 
pated \dewing the trees, said, ^'To-day I, too, 
will feast my eyes and lay up stores for future 
remembrance." And she went to the casement 
and looked at the trees. And their glory had 
departed. Naked and thin and cold were their 
limbs, and of their beauty naught remained save 



Cheer Up 5 i 

two heaps of fading leaves that had been gold 
and scarlet. 

And the woman smote her breast and cried, 
^^Of a truth, beauty is transitory." 

Her sister made answer: ^'The remembrance 
of beauty is everlasting." 




THE hero of a novel as yet unfinished, 
escaped from the sheets of manuscript 
in which he had been lying, and darted from 
the author's study, intent upon one thing — to 
escape the heroine whom he foresaw the author 
intended him to marry. ^^The author calls her 
pretty, but his ideas of beauty and mine are not 
the same. He says that she is witty, but if so, 
why has he put no wit in her mouth? As for 
being married to her in the last chapter, and 
having my taste called in question by a lot of 



52 cheer Up 

critics who know nothing beyond their calling, 
I simply won't stand it." And he walked out 
into the street and was lost in the crowd. 

Meanwhile the author came to his desk, 
ready to begin his daily grind; for he had made 
such a reputation on his first novel that his 
orders would keep him busy for seven years, 
and he kept his thought-mill working day and 
night. He was at work upon the nineteenth 
chapter, in which the hero was absent on a visit, 
and the morning wore away before he noticed 
that he had escaped. Then he was in a great 
pother. He felt that it would be no use to put 
the matter into the hands of the detectives, for 
in his inmost heart he knew that his hero was 
so like every other romantic hero of the last dec- 
ade that he ,could never be distinguished either 
in a crowd or alone. There was but one course 
open to him — to declare the hero dead, and 
have the heroship descend to the next in line. 
But, unfortunately, the next in line was his 



Cheer Up 53 

brother and his rival, and to make him hero and 
give the girl to him would be contrary to the 
scheme of the novel. 

She might have married the villain, but the 
author was too popular to risk being as uncon- 
ventional as that. No; there was but one course 
open: to kill the girl in the twentieth chapter, 
and so make a tragic novel of the book. But 
tragic novels are poor sellers, and one poor 
seller might cause the canceling of orders for 
his future novels. 

Canceling his orders ! The driven author laid 
his aching head in his hands and pondered. 
Cancellation would mean freedom from the 
ceaseless grind, the eternal hunt for characters 
and incidents and plots and romanticism. Yes, 
he would kill the girl and accept the conse- 
quences with unruffled heart. 

And so it happened that the heroine died of 
grief for the hero — in the twentieth chapter. 
And the capricious public, waiving for once 



54 Cheer Up 

their desire for a happy ending, accepted the 
book with acclamations, and the poor author 
received orders fourteen years ahead. 

And he went crazy and went on writing in his 
cell, and now his novels please only certain of 
the critics, who declare them mystical. 

As for the escaped hero, he was now in real 
life, and as such a hero could never, by any 
chance, exist in real life, he died in a few days, 
and that was the end of him. 




THE most uncomfortable-looking person at 
a reception or a musicale is the one who 
hasn't any small talk. He is more uncomforta- 
ble at the musicale because there is more chance 
for conversation there — particularly if there 
are many piano numbers. 



Cheer Up ^^ 

If he is with some one who can do the talking 
herself he is all right, for then he can listen; 
but if his partner be also short of small talk 
then is their condition pitiable. He racks his 
brains for something to say. He has read that 
the weather is tabooed. Ah, if it were not, what 
a lot of things he could say! He wet his feet 
yesterday, and the day before he sat in a draft 
— why, there are endless possibilities in our 
weather. 

He sits and gazes at his vis-a-vis, his eyes 
getting more and more feverish each moment. 
His mind is now a blank. Not because he is a 
fool, but because he is shy. At last he makes 
a momentous discovery. The fireplace in the 
front parlor is larger than the one in the back 
parlor. 

Mr. White (with enthusiasm) — Why, have 
you noticed that the fireplace in here is a different 
size from the one in the front parlor? 

Miss Purple (glad as he of a subject) — Why, 



56 cheer Up 

no, I hadn't noticed it. It is, isn't it? I wonder 
why. 

Mr. W. (elated) — I'm sure I don't know. 
Maybe they were built at different times. Do 
you carry measurements in your head well? 

Miss P. — No, I'm awfully stupid about them. 
Why do you ask? 

Mr. W. — I was wondering how much differ- 
ence there was between the fireplaces. 

Miss P. — We might ask Mrs. Trouville. 
(Calls to the hostess, who is passing.) Mrs. 
Trouville, do you know how much bigger this 
fireplace is than the one in the front parlor? 

Mrs. T. — Why, I don't think there's any 
difference. Why do you ask? 

Mr. W. — We were — having quite a talk 
about it. I thought this was bigger — no, I 
mean the other. 

Mrs. T. — I think they're identical. (Pre- 
sents a new man to Miss Purple and takes Mr. 
White off to meet "an awfully nice girl.") 



Cheer Up 57 

Mr. White's heart sinks. He was getting 
along so swimmingly on the subject of the fire- 
places. He feels he was quite bright, and 
maybe this new girl won't care to talk about 
fireplaces at all. However, the plunge must be 
made. 

Mrs. T. — Miss Green, let me present Mr. 
White. 

Mr. W. — Charm I've been having quite 

a discussion with Miss Purple about the fire- 
places. 

Miss Green — Is it a riddle? I adore riddles. 

Mr. W. — No — er — I mean these fireplaces. 
Don't you think this one is bigger than the 
other? 

Miss G. (who is not bashful) — I never gave 
them any thought. Did you hear Siegfried? 

Mr. W. (who is not musical) — No, I rarely 
attend lectures. I think that the front fire pi 

Miss G. — Been to the Water Color? 

Mr. W. (in a blue funk)— What do you mean? 



58 Cheer Up 

Miss G. — The exhibition. 

Mr. W. — Oh — oh, no. I thought you said 
water cooler. I was wondering 

Miss G. (mahciously) — What were you won- 
dering? 

Mr. W. (blankly) — I was wondering whether 
they meant to make those fireplaces different, 
or if it only happened so. 

Miss G. — It must have required a good deal 
of study. Are you fond of reading? Ever read 
the Elsie books? 

Mr. W. (flushing) — I've just finished Steven- 
son's works for the third time. 

Miss G. (with fervor) — Oh, are you fond of 
Stevenson? 

Mr. W.— Well, rather. 

(They plunge into a spirited talk and fire- 
places are forgotten. At last Mr. White feels 
perfectly at ease. Miss Green is thoughtful 
and bright, and he wishes the evening were to be 
twice as long.) 



Cheer Up 59 

Mrs. T. — Miss Green, may I present Colonel 
Foxglove? Mr. White, I want you to meet 
Miss Stave, the composer. 

And Mr. White is reduced to fireplaces again. 




I CAME across the following in a paper 
printed twenty years hence : 

^'It is now but little more than a year since 
we received the first signal from Mars. What 
a sensation it made, to be sure! The question 
that had vexed centuries was solved at last. 
Mars had inhabitants. The earlier lights were 
somewhat dim, and no one imagined that the 
messages that were flashed by their means 
through millions of miles of ether would in time 
assume the proportions of a public nuisance. 

'^But night after night the light waxed 
stronger, and what were at first serious ques- 



6o Cheer Up 

tions concerning our world, propounded by a 
scientist, degenerated into remarks not more 
volatUe than they were impertinent. 
^ "Last night, promptly at nine o'clock, the 
blinding flashes were turned on the earth, and 
those of our citizens who had assembled in the 
aerial park to witness the passage of the beauti- 
ful air-ship ^ Light of the West,' on her nightly 
encircling of the globe, were forced to devote 
all their energies to dodging the annoying glare. 

"It is only fair to suppose that it is some 
ofiice-boy who in the absence of the astronomer 
indulges a love for mischief. The fact that he 
is beyond the reach of human agencies makes 
his conduct all the more distressing, and as his 
signalings are of very questionable taste, we 
can only hope that death comes to the inhabi- 
tants of Mars, and that this unquiet freak may 
soon fill a grave (if graves are filled in the planet) 
of the proper dimensions. 

"A fortune awaits the man who invents a 



Cheer Up 6i 

means to rid the earth (we had almost said to 
rid the universe) of this destroyer of optic nerves. 
And until then we would advise people to stay 
in-doors during the half-hour that he devotes 
to his unseemly flashes of alleged wit." 




IN my forthcoming book, "Advice to Young 
Writers," I intend to devote a chapter like 
the following to "The Weather in its Influence 
upon the Reader and the Plot." For few of 
our younger writers appreciate how important 
a part climatic conditions play in a truly great 
novel. 

Your tyro will have the hero dying to an 
accompaniment of clearing skies and a westerly 
breeze. Of course, if he wishes to gain an effect 
by contrast, this is all right; but too often it is 
not intent, but inadvertence. The writer of 



62 Cheer Up 

inexperience introduces weather simply as a bit 
of pleasant padding. 

But with those to whom writing is not a trade, 
but a great art, the weather plays as important 
a part as it does in the conversation of a bashful 
man. 

Let us quote from Bernard Considine's won- 
derfully successful novel, ^^From Wash-lady to 
Washington": 

'^The voice of a tiny baby's cry within the 
house for the first time in twenty years gave 
notice to all the retainers that a new lord had 
come to Aircliffe Castle. Outside the peep of 
new-born robins, across the sky the fleeting forms 
of feathery clouds touched with the coloring kiss 
of early morn. New life in the summer zephyrs, 
new fragrance in the climbing honeysuckle, 
and the tiny wail of a new voice within the 
castle." 

That is beautiful. But who would have cared 
for it if Mr. Bernard Considine had surrounded 



Cheer Up 63 

the castle with a fog and started a chorus of 
raucous rooks? 

And in the twentieth chapter of the same book 
we have this memorable passage : 

'^Athwart the heavens dark, heavy, thunder- 
ous-looking clouds stole stealthily. The pre- 
scient boom of distant thunder presaged the 
coming storm. Oh, Sir Giles, wake up! Do 
you not see the villain who is to strike at thy 
fair young life, and who is even now ascending 
the servants' stairs and will soon move inevitably 
toward thy couch?" 

Is not that masterly? You are prepared for 
the entrance of the villain as soon as the clouds 
come rumbling on. But what if the great Ber- 
nard had peopled the massy cavern of the sky 
with mackerel clouds? 

Look at this passage on page 57 of the first 
edition (I believe that it is on page 60 in all later 
editions) : 

'^The rain came in fitful gusts, and anon the 



64 Cheer Up 

sun shone forth. Fleecy clouds, driven hither 
and thither by j&ckle winds, caromed across the 
rifts of blue. Lieutenant Clifton, twirling his 
mustache with impatience, awaited the answer 
of the mercurial Evadne. Yesterday he would 
have sworn she loved him. To-day he would 
swear nothing. Yes or no, her answer would 
surprise him not." 

How well the great Considine knows! He 
does not surround that fateful scene with a 
snow-storm and let the cry of coasting young- 
sters be borne in through the heavy plate win- 
dows to where the lieutenant and Evadne stood. 

Do you remember that immortal chapter 
where Mercy Morton, the repentant daughter, 
returns to her father's house — that house from 
which his hardness had driven her five years 
before? A man who placed no reliance upon 
the weather as a friend of his intentions and a 
subtle compeller of certain moods would, like 
as not, have made her walk in some bright May 



Cheer Up 65 

morning, while little boys were spinning tops 
upon the sidewalk, and the grocer's cart had 
halted in front of the house, and the skies bore 
promise of a lovely day. But Bernard Consi- 
dine never misses fire — or weather. 

^^The sleet fell in swirling, stinging sheets, 
as if each particle was bent on reminding Mercy 
that she had sinned. She leaned against the 
oaken door of her father's house, and it fell 
open. Her father, on his way to bed, started 
back as the half -frozen girl fell at his feet. 
He recognized her at a glance. Above the roar 
of the storm the voice of his conscience sounded 
in thunder tones, 'Forgive her, forgive her!' 
She had swooned, but he made a snowball of 
the sleet that covered her jet-black hair, and 
rubbed her forehead with it until his girl — his 
little girl — his little Mercy — his baby — sat 
up and cried, 'Father!'" 

Stop the snow now. There is no more need 
of it. Old Mr. Morton has taken his little 



66 Cheer Up 

daughter back to his heart, and the street 
cleaners might as well begin their work. 




I HAVE always heard that Schopenhauer was 
a very profound German philosopher and 
I have had an immense respect for his opinions, 
knowing but few of them, but willing to accept 
them on the hearsay of others. 

It is always a pleasure to catch a weasel 
asleep . He looks so foolish when he opens his sharp 
little eyes and finds you've caught him napping. 

Well, recently I came across some of the great, 
the very great German philosopher's opinions, 
and found the old fellow nodding like Homer. 

For instance, here is what he says about 
women: ^^ Women are directly adapted to act 
as the nurses and educators of our early child- 
hood, for the simple reason that they themselves 



Cheer Up 67 

are childish, fooHsh, and short-sighted; in a 
word, are big children all their lives, something 
intermediate between the child and the man/' 

Great is German philosophy, and Schopen- 
hauer is its prophet. 

But see him nod again. 

If you're looking for pure humor, you women 
read this: 

^^ Women should never have the free dispo- 
sition of wealth, strictly so called, which they 
may inherit, such as capital, houses and estates. 
They need a guardian always; therefore they 
should not have the guardianship of their chil- 
dren under any circumstances whatever." 

Think of that, you who took the helm when 
your husband died and have made the business 
pay; a thing he never was able to do. Think 
of that, you mothers of our Longfellows and 
Emersons and Motleys. 

When a great man essays foolish news he can 
turn out a pretty good article. 



68 Cheer Up 



ARE you going to be his mother or only his 
nurse's mistress? 

If you're only going to be his nurse's mistress 
then you'll have an easy time and I wish you 
much joy of it. 

You'll be able to attend lectures, play bridge, 
go out riding in autos with your fortunate 
neighbors, attend the matinee and go to evening 
dinners, while baby is being cared for by the 
ill-educated woman who has kindly consented 
to take him off your hands. 

I wish the baby just as much joy of the 
arrangement, but I'm afraid he won't get it. 
He'll be (after all's said and done) a nursling 
instead of a '^ mother's baby." He'll catch the 
quaint little ungrammaticisms that nurse lets 
fall and he'll never be quite as refined as you 
are, but you'll really be much freer and you'll 
j&nd marriage not half the responsibility you 



Cheer Up 69 

understood it when your mother was talking 
to you about it. 

But if you want to have a really superior sort 
of boy, why not discharge the girl — you can 
get another just as uneducated at any time — 
and try bringing him up yourself, the way that 
your mother brought you up ? 

There won't be as much bridge, and the 
matinees and evening dinners will most of them 
go by the board, but you'll have a boy brought 
up by a woman of refinement, and that's going 
to better the boy's chances all through life. 
Let the girl go this Saturday week. 

And allow me to congratulate the baby. 




THE other night I had been reading a com- 
pilation of wit and humor, and the names 
of John Phoenix, Artemas Ward, Josh Billings, 



70 Cheer Up 

Bill Nye and many others were dancing before 
my eyes, so hard had I read and so long. 

My chair being easy, and the hour being 
late, I closed my eyes and thought pleasant 
thoughts of the many men who in times past 
have lightened the burdens of hard-working 
Americans. 

Then suddenly I became conscious of the 
fact that I could see through my closed lids, 
and there stood two men before me. One was 
plainly the Average Man, but the other seemed 
like a composite of all the humorists I had been 
reading. He was rather above the medium 
height, his eyes were brilliant and deep-sunken, 
his eyebrows shaggy, his nose aquiline and 
long, his lips full and mobile, but his expression 
was exceedingly sad. 

^^Who are you?" said the Average Man, and 
the other, answering, said: 

^^I am the Typical Humorist, and I have 
sought you out to tell you what my days are 



Cheer Up 7 1 

like. I know that if I stand here long enough 
you will say, ^How does it feel to be funny?' 
and so I am going to save your question." 

I, in my comfortable chair, could not conceal 
my joy, but I knew enough to keep my eyes 
shut. I have lost many a pleasant fancy through 
opening my eyes too soon. 

^^Tell me why you look so sad," said the 
Average Man. 

"I knew you'd ask that," said the Humorist. 
"I look sad because I never forget that in the 
course of time I must die and cease to be a 
humorist." 

He heaved a sigh, and went on: ^^Of course, 
the life of a humorist is one glad, mad frolic and 
rollick beneath his mask of sadness. His one 
idea is how to get the most fun out of existence, 
and despite the fact that he looks sad from the 
cause just mentioned, he is inwardly bubbling 
over with joy from the time he opens his eyes 
until he closes them in sleep. 



72 Cheer Up 

'^When he arises in the morning he jumps 
out of bed with a glad cry and a handspring and 
a merry jest which the Angel of Sleep gave him 
in the night, and of which he must deliver 
himself. In his pajamas — if he is modern, 
otherwise in his flapping nightshirt — he steps 
to the book-shelf and eagerly seizes on a book 
of humor penned by a brother in the craft. 
Loud and long is the laughter it evokes, and his 
children come flocking from every room to hear 
the joke and laugh with him. 

"At breakfast he never opens his mouth ex- 
cept to crack jokes, and his children laugh so 
immoderately at them that they eat practically 
nothing, and thus the butcher's bill is kept 
down. 

"If he says nothing serious to any one, so 
also no one says anything serious to him. He 
is the cause of jokes from men whom no one 
would suspect of a sense of humor, and his 
progress is punctuated by ripples of laughter. 



Cheer Up 73 

That is a mixed metaphor, and nothing is so 
dear to the heart of a humorist as a carefully- 
mixed metaphor. Just as the worse a pun is 
the better it is, so the more you mix a metaphor 
the better the flavor is, it being like a salad in that. 

^^But to return. It is all his pastor can do 
to avoid joking in his pulpit when he is in the 
congregation, and to save his pastor's feelings 
he stays away from church. If he is introduced 
to a stranger who knows of him by reputation 
the stranger's features relax into an expectant 
smile and, say what the humorist may, the laugh 
is there to greet it. He is funny; therefore he 
is funny. But should the stranger not know 
his reputation he may crack his merriest jokes 
without danger of evoking a smile. In this 
world labels are necessary, and reputations are 
labels that are pasted on a man to save the rest 
of the world from too much thought." 

^'Ha!" said the Average Man, thinking it 
was up to him to do something. 



74 Cheer Up 

^^ Thanks," said the Humorist. '^To con- 
tinue : He may Hke pictures, and asks an artist 
friend to send him a ticket on the opening day 
of an exhibition. Rest assured that he will not 
be allowed to flatter himself that he likes beau- 
tiful pictures; that his eye is ravished by the 
counterfeit presentment of a landscape. No, 
indeed! His artist friend will hunt for a hu- 
morous picture and will take him to it and say, 
^That's what'll hit you! Now say something 
funny about it.' 

^'Oh, how he has to enjoy that funny picture! 
He comes back to it, accompanied by his artist 
friend, and makes a new joke about it each 
time, and laughs until his lungs are entirely 
exhausted of air, and then he steals a glance at 
a bit of wizardry in marine painting. But his 
vigilant friend says, ^Here, you won't care for 
that. I think there's another funny picture in 
the next room.' So they go into the next room, 
and he has to shake his sides with laughter at a 



Cheer Up 75 

humorous bit of genre painting and make new 
jokes about it which double up those who know 
he is a humorist. The others remain silent. 

'^Should he take a walk by himself in the 
woods, his constant desire is to find something 
humorous in the hang of a limb or the shape of 
a cloud, or something eccentric in the workshop 
of Dame Flora." 

^^Oh, please, Mr. Humorist, say something 
funny," said the Average Man. 

I leaned forward to hear the jest, and through 
force of habit opened my eyes and found my- 
self quite alone in the room. And, yawning 
prodigiously, I went to bed. 




THERE'S a bootblack I know whose stand 
is on the comer of two streets, but just 
where it is, better not to say. If the general 



76 Cheer Up 

public found him out it would make him self- 
conscious and spoil my little ^^ cinch." For he 
tells me fables. 

Yesterday I stepped into his little den and 
said I wanted a shine. 

^^Boss/' said he, as he cleaned my shoes with 
a moist rag preparatory to shining them, ^'did 
I ever tell youse about der gilly dat bought 
grat'tude?" 

^^I believe that that one is yet to come to 
me, Jimmy," said I. 

^^It's comin' now all right," said he. ^^Dere 
was a young feller got to be twenty-one and his 
fader had erl to burn " 

"What?" said I. 

"Erl — karasene erl — to bum, barrels an^ 
barrels of it, an' he says to der young man : 

"'Willy, I'll take me hooks oflf a hun'red 
t'ousan' dollars for a minute. Grab it before 
I change me min' an' do all der good youse can 
wit' it." 



Cheer Up 77 

^^And der young man was knocked silly, be- 
cause dis was der fois' t'ing he'd ever heard 
about doin' good except doin' a man good. An' 
he looks kin' of dopey an' says: 'Really, fader?' 
An' der ol' man starts to take back der check, 
but Willy has a fit of hoss sense an' he grabs der 
check an' runs down to der bank wit' it an' con- 
verts it into cash — how's dat? 

''Well, w'en he had der money in his pocket 
he felt bulgy an' so did his heart, an' he says to 
himself, 'How kin I do der greates' good to der 
greates' number of me feller mortles?' An' 
den he t'ought how fond people was of der 
teayter an' how little joy come into der lives of 
der poor — dat's w'ot he'd heard a lady slummer 
say one day. Wouldn't it jar yer? Gee, I'm 
poor an' I'm happy all der w'ile. Well, anyway 
he squeezes his head wit' his snow w'ite ban's, 
an' at last he says, ' I have it. I'll send a hun'red 
t'ousan' people to der teayter an' make dem 
happy.' 



jS Cheer Up 

"(Soy, I'll bet your shoes pinch your feet. 
No?) Well, dat same day he calls a hun'red 
t'ousan' of der very poor togedder — soy, boss, 
der t'ing I like about a fable is dat youse kin 
make anybody do anything an' no one will say 
'How improberble!' He calls der hun'red 
t'ousan' to him an' he says, 'Each poor man 
dat hasn' any joy in his life will please walk pas' 
me an' receive a ticket to der teayter. Dere is 
fifty teayters in dis town holdin' two t'ousan' 
each 

''W'ot's dat, boss? No, no partickler town, 
aldo' it might be New York to make it easy. 
He says, 'Each one of dese tickets is good fer 
a dollar seat. I can't let youse choose der 
teayters, because dat would take too long, but 
all plays are good if you t'ink so long enough, 
an' I hope you'll all have der time of your 
lives an' remember dat it was Willy Hartgelt 
dat gave you dese little slices of sunshine. To- 
morrer may be stormy an' mebbe you won't 



Cheer Up 79 

have no coal nor nuttin' to eat, but you'll have 
der memory of to-night to take into your homes.' 
He made such a long speech dat more dan one 
of der geezers to? him to cut it out. 

^^Gee, it was a big pile of tickets he had an' 
it took a long time fer der hun'red t'ousan' to 
walk pas', but dey done it in time fer der evenin' 
performance, an' den Willy he spent der evenin' 
walkin' pas' der teayters an' t'inkin' dat every- 
body was happy on him an' wouldn' dey be 
grateful forever? 

^^Well, he had happy dreams all night, an' 
in der mornin' he goes into his ol' man's bed- 
room, an' der old man says: ^ Willy, have^you 
made up your min' how you're goin' to spend 
dat money? Will you build a hospital an' call 
it der Hartgelt Hospital, or will you buy ol' 
masters an' let der poor look at dem w'enever 
dey're hung-ry?' 

^^An' Willy says, ^ Fader, der whole town is 
happy already. I sent a hun'red t'ousan' 



8o Cheer Up 

people to der teayter las' night, an' dis mornin' 
dere are a hun'red t'ousan' poor people at deir 
breakfas' tables, t'inkin' of der good time I gev 
dem an' wishin' dere was more like me.' 

^^An' his fader got hot under der collar, an' 
says: ^^If dere was more like you, yer chump, 
dere 'd be as many lunatic asylums as dere are 
saloons. Dis is der day I disinher't yer an' 
sen' you out of me house. Youse t'ink you are 
a spreader of sunshine, but you've spread it so 
thin dat it's full of holes by dis time. Evaporate ! ' 

^^An' der young man evaporated into der 
street widout a cent an' widout his breakfas', 
an' he went to each one of der hun'red t'ousan' 
dat he had staked to a slice of joy an' he gives 
'em a hard luck story. 

^^ (Keep yer foot still, please.) But of course 
each man said, ^I'm very sorry, but I'm a poor 
man meself. I'd rather hev had der dollar dan 
der ticket. Den I'd have some money lef an' 
I could blow you off to a piece of cheese, but 



Cheer Up 8 1 

now I have on'y der recollection of a darn poor 
play. An' anyhow it wasn't so much. If I 
was as rich as you was yesterday I'd do more 
fer a feller creature dan give him a dinky teayter 
ticket an' I'd let him choose his own teayter. I 
wanted a vawdervill show an' I got Ibsen. 
You'll have to chase yerself, fer I ain't got 
nuttin'. 

"An' so it was all along der line, an' at las' 
he comes to an ol' geezer dat had been bedridden 
for ten years, an' of course he hadn' went to der 
teayter an' he didn' feel cross at der young man, 
an' he invites him in to share a glass of milk wit' 
him, an' he says: 

"^Me Christian frien', w'en your fader gev 
youse a hun'red t'ousan' dollars youse went out 
to buy gratitude wit' it. An' der trouble was 
you wanted quantity an' not quality. Instead 
of buyin' a solid chunk of gratitude for der whole 
of der money, or ten smaller chunks, repre- 
sentin' ten hospital beds, youse went an' bought 



82 Cheer Up 

a hun'red t'ousan' squares of it for a dollar a 
square, an' in dese days gratitude dat's on'y 
wort' a dollar ain't wort' carryin' home.' " 

^^ What's the moral of that, Jimmy?" said I, 
as I stepped down from the chair and absent- 
mindedly handed him a nickel. 

"I guess youse wouldn' un'erstan' it, boss. 
It's ten cents fer patent leathers." 




ISN'T it lucky that we don't have to be good- 
natured at home? You take a woman who 
has been out all the afternoon calling on her 
friends and entertaining them by her witty and 
vivacious conversation, and let her enter her own 
home tired with the nervous strain that follows 
incessant talk of a witty character, and if she 
had to be vivacious and delightfully chatty to 
her own people — why, I wouldn't answer fgr 



Cheer Up 83 

the consequences. Perhaps she'd have nervous 
prostration. 

But, thank heaven, when she is under her own 
roof she can either be silent or cross. 

I say isn't it lucky that women are not bound 
to be good-natured at home? but I can as well 
say bless the luck that makes it possible for a 
man or a child to be perfectly natural at home. 

Why, if the things we say to our sons and our 
daughters and our brothers and sisters were said 
to our social friends the beautiful structure of 
society would disrupt with a bang. 

Ill-nature at home is the great safety valve 
provided by a wise economist in order that we 
may be good-natured abroad. Imagine chil- 
dren who were never allowed to say the broth- 
erly things that they do say when at home — 
imagine them abroad with their pent-up feelings 
ready to burst out. It doesn't take much 
imagination to picture the scene. 

That witty after-dinner speaker who kept a 



84 Cheer Up 

hundred people in roars of merriment and who 
made many despondent people forget their woes 
when they read his speech in the paper next 
morning, was not able to prepare his speech 
except at the expense of the nerves of his whole 
household. Why, his children had been reciting 
the speech for days before he had learned it 
himself — with the quick receptivity of youth — 
and as the day of the banquet approached and 
his nervousness increased, he made his household 
a miniature hades, and his wife and children told 
him that they wished such things as after dinner 
speeches had never been invented. But was it 
not better to divert some hundreds of work-a-day 
worlders at the expense of his family's peace of 
mind than to give up trying to learn the speech 
and spend the time in saying kind things to his 
sons and daughters who could never benefit 
him? 

No, no, let the home be the place where we 
vent our spleen, and let us present to the world 



Cheer Up 85 

at large our sunny side and gain reputations 
for being always pleasant and good company. 

For a business man is at home but a small 
portion of the time, but he is abroad most of 
each working day. 

But women are home most of the time. May- 
be they would do well to forget this advice. 




AMONG the jesters of inanimate nature t 
the clouds hold first place. No hill is 
too majestic for them to sportively buffet with 
damp caresses; no object too sublime for them 
to caricature. 

Here is one that looks like the Father of his 
Country. While you note the resemblance the 
saucy cloud takes up a reef in its sailing area 
and gives to George a snub nose that would 
have detracted from his dignity had he borne 



86 Cheer Up 

it in life. Another shift and George has be- 
come ^^ very like a whale," and the sportive cloud 
sails on to play other pranks, perhaps giving 
us a counterfeit presentment of Napoleon and 
then knocking him into a cocked hat — or better 
still, a French liberty cap. 

Mount Washington itself is not safe from the 
mimicry of the clouds. Do you see that dark 
and heavy fellow whose aspect is portentously 
serious? Surely no humor lurks in that cloud. 
Wait but a little. He seems to say, "You jour- 
ney days and nights, you earth people, to see 
a great mound of earth and rock that lifts its 
height to the blue sky. Is it not grand? Is it 
not awe-compelling? Faugh! that which was 
centuries in building I will dominate in a few 
minutes. I will eclipse it." 

And the great cloud raises itself black and 
terrible far above the terrestrial mountain, and 
forms a chain of mountains so grand and seem- 
ingly so eternal that Mount Washington hides his 



Cheer Up 87 

diminished head and plays the part of a foot 
hill to the stately '^Mountains of the Universe." 
Then with a roar of titanic laughter that earth 
folk call thunder the cloud sweeps on its way, 
dashing great gusts of rain in the face of Mount 
Washington. 




A CERTAIN Cheap Philosopher was in the 
habit of saying whenever he heard that 
an old friend had passed away, ^^ Ah well. Death 
comes to us all. It is no new thing. It is what 
we must expect. Pass me the butter, my dear. 
Yes, Death comes to all and my friend's time 
had come." 

Now, Death overheard these philosophical 
remarks at different times, and one day he 
showed himself to the Cheap Moralizer. 

^^I am Death," said he, simply. 



88 Cheer Up 

"Go away!" said the man in a panic. "I 
am not ready for you." 

"Yes, but it is one of your favorite truisms 
that Death comes to all, and I am but proving 
your words." 

"Go away. You are dreadful." 

"No more dreadful than I always am. But 
why have you changed so? You have never 
feared the death that has come to your friends. 
I never heard you sigh when I carried off your 
old companions. You have always said ^It is 
the way of all flesh.' Shall I make an exception 
in favor of your flesh?" 

"Yes, for I am not ready." 

"But / am. Your time has come. Do not 
repine. Your friends will go on buttering their 
toast. They will take it as philosophically as 
you have taken every other death." 

And the Cheap Philosopher and Death de- 
parted on a long journey together. 



Cheer Up 89 

I HAVE been told that this is a hard world, 
and I dare say it is. In fact, there are 
times when I would be willing to swear to it. 

But one of the chief reasons why it is a hard 
world is because we make it hard for each other 
and for ourselves. 

If Brown, having the money to do it, pays his 
bills promptly; if Jones makes a point of treat- 
ing his employees kindly; if his clerk remembers 
that a clerk can be affable without loss of self- 
respect; if Mrs. Smith realizes that a servant is 
a human being and not temporarily a slave; if 
you stop shoving women in your efforts to get 
^^the last bridge car for at least two minutes"; 
if your sister remembers to thank the man who 
rose and offered her his seat — although he was 
more tired than she, in spite of her shopping — 
why, the world will be that less hard. 

But how many of us remember that it is 
mainly human beings who make the world a 



90 Cheer Up 

hard place? I say something unkind, and the 
world is measurably harder for the person to 
whom I addressed my unkindness; you treat 
your clerks as if you were better than they, and 
they treat you as if you were simply some one 
to be ^^done"; and so much of the world as is 
made up of you and your employees and myself 
becomes that much harder. 

What a capital idea it would be if the people 
in New York City were to set apart a day in 
each year to be called "Kindness Day"! 

Let the Mayor proclaim it a month in ad- 
vance, and advertise it in all the papers of the 
country, in order that visitors from out of town 
might know what to expect. 

Let each man, from the richest plutocrat to 
the humblest push-cart man — if push-cart men 
are humble — make up his mind that on that 
day he would devote all his energies to being 
kind. 

Do you know what would happen if each one 



cheer Up 91 

practiced his or her part, and all became letter 
perfect in it for the one performance only? 

Why, New York would stop being New York, 
and some men would go out of business. 

A good place to observe operations would be 
at the Brooklyn end of the bridge at the morning 
rush hour. 

Crowds laughing and joking, and bowing in a 
friendly manner, the way people do in the 
country, whence most of us sprung, would 
alight from trains and trolleys, and would make 
their way in an orderly manner to the bridge. 

I'm afraid that there would be so much 
hanging back, so much of the ^^ after you, Gas- 
ton," spirit, that the conductors would find it 
hard to keep their tempers as the time ap- 
proached for them to start their cars. But a 
holiday spirit would be in the air. American 
crowds that are not getting anywhere are 
proverbially good-natured, and for once the 
crowds on their way to business, having risen 



92 Cheer Up 

earlier to allow for delays, would laugh and 
joke all the way over; there would be no dresses 
torn, no expletives exchanged, no hard words 
anywhere. 

And the policemen on street corners would 
answer questions politely, and go half a block 
out of their way to direct strangers — just as 
they do in other cities, even now. 

Arrived at their places of business, there would 
be no hard looks. Every one would be on time, 
and each one would try to do all he could to 
make the labors of the day easier. The under- 
paid clerk would try to give as good value as if 
he had been well paid; the underpaying em- 
ployer would make up his mind to give all the 
deserving clerks a raise; the elevator men and 
the box-office clerks would be civil to the 
thoughtless women who asked fool questions, 
and the women who ask fool questions would get 
a glimmer of an idea as to their tendency, and 
would keep a watch on their tongues. 



Cheer Up 93 

Shoppers — but there would be no shoppers 
on Kindness Day. No women who were trying 
to be kind would ask tired salesgirls to show 
goods that they had no intention of buying. 

No, the stores would be less crowded than 
usual. Women would step quickly to the 
counters, ask for what they wanted, pay for it 
and walk quickly away. 

Floor-walkers would walk around asking 
salesgirls if they did not wish to sit down for a 
while. Owners of department stores would 
poke their heads into the basements, and, no- 
ticing the foul air, would resolve on having ven- 
tilators and electric fans put in at once; and, 
being men of action, their kindness would bear 
immediate fruit, whereas, if they had waited until 
next day, their habitual carelessness of others' 
comfort would have prevented the reform. 
Men who have already worked such reforms in 
their stores would spend the day thinking up 
new ways of making labor pleasant. 



94 Cheer Up 

Business men on Kindness Day would find 
out that the office boy had a name, and would 
not shout ^^Here, boy!" 

And the office boy — well, it would be hard 
work for him to be anything but the heedless 
little fellow he had always been. Still, if the 
proclamation had been made early enough, and 
if he had been coached a little by the stock 
clerk or the assistant bookkeeper, he may very 
well have learned the lesson. Perhaps he would 
refrain from fighting with the boy on the floor 
below in the lower hall at lunch time. Who 
knows? 

I once heard a man on an elevated train say: 
"I never give my seat to a working girl. If she 
comes down to work she takes the conse- 
quences. If I see that it's a lady who wants a 
seat, I give it to her." 

On Kindness Day even this — gentleman 
would give up his seat to any one in skirts. 

And the cabmen. Well, really, cabmen can 



Cheer Up 95 

be kind — on Kindness Day. They have two 
ways open to them: they can be merciful to 
their beasts, and they can stick to legal tariffs. 

I don't know why it is, but the phrase '^a 
kind cabman" sounds curious. And yet there 
is no doubt that cabmen, being human beings, 
have just as much capability for kindness as — 
hotel clerks, for instance. 

Teachers in the schools, public and private, 
would have a little more patience on Kindness 
Day. They would remember their own hatred 
of cross teachers, and they would make the day 
one to be remembered by pupils who, in their 
turn, would realize, perhaps for the first time in 
their lives, that teachers do not enjoy teaching 
forgetful, mischievous pupils, and — but I don't 
know whether boys and girls wouldn't be boys 
and girls just the same one day as another; the 
good ones as good as usual and the bad ones just 
as bad. It takes about forty or fifty years to 
make some bad children good. 



96 Cheer Up 

By noon of Kindness Day, any stranger alight- 
ing from an air ship in New York would imagine 
that he was in the suburbs of Heaven. Nothing 
but laughter and high spirits; salaries being 
raised on every side, men working like beavers 
and singing like larks; walking delegates sitting 
still and looking happy; strikers and capitalists 
exchanging lights and views about the weather; 
pickpockets taking a holiday instead of a purse; 
car conductors keeping their much tried tem- 
pers — that is all a New York car conductor 
could be expected to do without more than one 
day's training. New York would be a show 
place on Kindness Day. 




YES, sir, I'm going to Chicago on business," 
said Binkersley to a suburbanite who had 
stopped in to buy a pair of gloves. ^'It's quite 
an expense, but my wife thinks I'll get it back 



cheer Up 97 

in health. Chicago is quite a bustling city, so 
I've always heard, and I may get ideas for my 
business. Castor gloves? No, we're all out of 
those just now. How would you go to Chicago? 
What train?" 

^' Why, there are a half dozen ways," said the 
suburbanite, who was a traveling man. "Why 
don't you get a pass?" 

"Me get a pass?" said the little storekeeper. 
"No, sir. I've always paid my way." 

"That's all right," said the traveling man; 
"but you know these railroad corporations are 
soulless affairs, and if you can get a pass, I'd 
do it." 

"Well, how do you do it? Don't you have 
to be rich?" 

The suburbanite was something of a practical 
joker, and he saw that Binkersley was already 
inoculated with "pass fever," so he said: 

"Rich? No. It all depends on the way it's 
done, Let me concoct a letter for you. The 



9 8 Cheer Up 

general passenger agent of the eight-track road 
is a jolly fellow, and if you hit him right he may 
pass you all the way to Chicago, and then you 
can do him a good turn by crying up the road 
whenever you sell a pair of socks. See?" 

^'Why, certainly," said the tradesman, quite 
delighted with the prospect. ^^I'U advertise his 
road, and may be worth a great deal to him be- 
fore I get through." 

"That's the idea exactly. You let me write 
the letter and then you copy it." 

So the waggish customer sat down to his desk 
and wrote as follows: 



"Mr. J. C. Gregory: — Dear Sir: I am nearly 
35 and I have never let a man pay my fare, even 
on a street car. Now I'm going to Chicago. 
Do you think I will let you send me a pass? 
If you do, just try it and see what I will do with 
it. You will find my address on the heading, 
and any time you want socks or gentlemen's 
furnishings, drop in. Be quite sure that even 



Cheer Up 99 

if you did send me a pass I would never say a 
thing about your road, as I think all roads are 
monopolies. Yours, 

^^ Joseph Binkersley." 

^^ There!" said the customer, when he read 
what he had written, ^^ Gregory will either 
think you're a crank or a very clever man. If 
it hits him all right you'll get a pass, and I'll 
have saved you $20." 

'^Say, this is awfully nice of you," saidBink- 
ersley. ^'Have a dress shirt?" 

^^ Thanks, but I only wanted to buy a pair of 
gloves, and you're out of those, you say." 

^'You don't understand me. I want you to 
accept a shirt. I never would have thought of 
trying to get a pass. I'll save at least $20, and 
I like to feel independent. Take a shirt along." 

^^Oh, you want me to have a shirt on you." 

^^No, on yourself," said Binkersley, to whom 
humor is an unknown quantity. 

The suburbanite allowed himself to be 

LOFC. 



lOO cheer Up 

^^ blown off" to an open front dress shirt and 
a pair of patent cuff clips, and then he departed, 
smiling inwardly. 

After the customer had gone Binkersley 
copied the letter in his own hand and mailed it. 

Next morning in Binkersley' s mail was a 
letter from the general passenger agent. It was 
short, but in the same vein as that which Binker- 
sley had sent. It ran: 

^^If you don't want to break that record of 
yours on passes, you'd better not come up to 
my office and have a talk with me or I might fix 
you out so you'd remember it." 

When Binkersley read this he was frightened 
at first. It looked a little like a threat. Then 
he handed it to his clerk and asked him what he 
thought of it. Now the clerk was a wide-awake 
New Yorker and he said at once: 

^^He isn't going to do a thing but give you a 
pass. You go up and see him." 



Cheer Up loi 

So Binkersley went up to the offices of the 
railroad company and asked to see the passenger 
agent. The passenger agent had gone out to 
lunch. 

^^ Pshaw!" said Binkersley in a nettled tone. 
^^I came here expressly to see him. It is on 
business that is important to him. Something 
relating to the road." 

Binkersley said this so sincerely and looked 
so as if he had come a thousand miles, that the 
clerk, who was a new one, asked him in to one 
of the inner offices and settled him comfortably 
and offered him a cigar from the agent's box, 
and Binkersley, the little ^ Agents' goods" man, 
sat back in a swivel chair and smoked a perfecto 
that tasted very strange to him, and felt that he 
was practically one of the high officials of the 
road. 

He sat there until he was so hungry he didn't 
know what to do, and then he asked where the 
railroad restaurant was, and he went down there 



I02 Cheer Up 

meaning to spend at least a quarter on his 
lunch, but it looked so very swell that he felt 
it would be small in him to spend less than a 
dollar, and that is what the lunch cost him, 
exclusive of the tip. He had no change smaller 
than a half dollar, so he asked the waiter to 
change the silver for him, and that obliging 
fellow brought back two quarters, which was in 
the nature of a hint. And Binkersley took it — 
that is, he gave a quarter to the waiter. 

After lunch he '^felt fine," and he went up to 
the oJB&ces again. 

^^Very sorry, sir," said the clerk, ^^but we've 
just received a telephone from Mr. Gregory and 
he won't be back until to-morrow or next day. 
He's called out of town." 

Binkersley was disappointed, but he was a phil- 
osophical sort of chap and he had had a good 
time, and it was only a prelude to big business. 

That evening he took his wife to the theater, 
a thing he had not done since he stopped getting 



Cheer Up 103 

bill-board tickets. The theater cost a good two 
dollars, for he got the very best seats in the 
second balcony, and after the play nothing 
would do for this man-about-to-get-a-pass but a 
supper at one of Young's restaurants, and that 
made another dollar look extremely ill. 

Next morning Mr. Binkersley went uptown, 
and he went in a cab. It was expensive, as he 
well knew, but it could be charged to expenses 
eventually. 

The passenger agent was in, but he was busy. 

"Tell him," said Mr. Binkersley with an 
importance that he could not conceal, although 
he tried to, "tell him that my cab is waiting for 
me outside and that I'd like to see him at once. 
I have been here twice before!" 

This had the desired effect. That is to say, 
the boy delivered the message, and in a moment 
Mr. Binkersley heard a roar of laughter from 
the inner room and said to himself: "He's in a 
good humor." 



I04 Cheer Up 

A moment later the boy returned and said 
with a deference that seemed the real thing to 
simple Mr. Binkersley: 'Xome this way, sir." 

Mr. Binkersley went that way and was ushered 
into the presence of a white-haired, bristly- 
bearded man who looked more like a genial 
farmer than the manager of a great business. 

^^Is this Mr. Binkersley?" said Mr. Gregory. 

"Yes, sir," said Mr. Binkersley. 

"So you don't want a pass, don't you?" said 
the passenger agent, carrying out the spirit of 
the letter which the suburbanite had written for 
Mr. Binkersley. 

"No, sir," said Mr. Binkersley in a puzzled 
tone. 

"Then what did you come for? " said Gregory. 

"Why — er — why, I mean I want a pass to 
Chicago and back, and in return I'll tell people 
to take your road." 

Mr. Gregory had pictured a different sort of 
man from the one who stood before him, and 



Cheer Up 105 

some of the humor of the letter seemed to leave 
it. He had evidently been put up to writ- 
ing it. 

^^ Suppose," said he, ^^we gave everybody in 
the country a pass to any place he asked for on 
condition that he advised his friends to buy 
tickets. How soon would we go into bank- 
ruptcy?" 

'^That would need some figuring," said Mr. 
Binkersley in such a simple manner that Mr. 
Gregory took pity on him and determined to 
give him a pass. 

^'Well, look here, Mr. Binkersley, I hear that 
your cab is at the door and I don't want your 
coachman to catch cold waiting for you, but I 
also want you to understand that I am general 
passenger agent of this road and if I want to 
give passes that is my own affair. You dared 
me to give you a pass and I am going to take 
your dare. Here is an order for a pass as far as 
Albany and return. That will take at least six 



io6 Cheer Up 

dollars off your expenses. I'm accustomed to 
having my own way and I insist upon your ac- 
cepting the pass." 

Mr. Binkersley was filled with mixed emo- 
tions. He was disappointed at the mileage of 
the pass, but he also wanted to set himself right 
with this man and he said : 

^^ Well, thank you, sir, but you misunderstood 
the letter. I meant all that in a joke. The 
fact is a friend of mine wrote it and I didn't 
quite see what he was driving at. I wish I'd 
written it myself because I wanted the pass all 
the way to Chicago and back. The fact is I 
am in a position to influence a good " 

The passenger agent had risen. ^^I'm very 
glad to have had this opportunity to see you, 
Mr. Binkersley, and I do hope the driver hasn't 
caught cold. You will exchange this order for 
a ticket to Albany and return. If you need 
any more passes write the letter yourself, as it 
will be a safeguard. Good-day." 



Cheer Up 107 

He heard a roar of laughter as he passed from 
the room of the passenger agent. 

*^A very pleasant and jovial gentleman," 
thought Mr. Binkersley. 




PERSONS returning from ^^the other side" 
have always expatiated upon the beauties 
of Richmond, its fine prospect of the silvery 
serpentine Thames, its long stretches of woods, 
its lovely terrace and its cooling breezes, and 
when the seventh day of intolerable London 
heat came and I found myself wilting I went to 
the ofl&ce of an English friend, Henley by name, 
and said to him: 

^Xan't you leave business for a while and 
take a tired stranger to some cool place? I've 
known heat in New York, but never such per- 
tinacious heat as this." 



io8 Cheer Up 

I have said that my friend is an Englishman, 
but were it not for his speech he would pass for 
a Yankee, for he is the incarnation of hustle. 
Our quick lunch places would be slow for him, 
and he would fret at the languor of the Chicago 
Limited. He is up to full steam all the time. 

^^Dear man, I'm awfully busy to-day. Still, 
it's always possible to work harder to-morrow. 
Come back in half an hour and I'll run down to 
Richmond with you." 

Then I left him dictating two letters at once, 
and I rode on top of a 'bus up and down the 
busy Strand until the half hour was up. 

I was near spent with the heat. I looked 
forward to a cool, shady retreat at Richmond, 
where perhaps I could listen to the song of an 
English lark or a thrush, and sip a cooling claret 
cup, and reflect upon the vanities of this 
world. 

I found Henley looking up a time-table. He 
flung it down as I came in, and said, ^'Ah, 



Cheer Up 109 

you're just in time. A train leaves Waterloo 
station in seven minutes." 

Seven minutes, and it was a mile from Hen- 
ley's ofl&ce to the Strand. It would be a shame 
on a day when horses were dropping like flies 
to make a horse do a mile in seven minutes in 
crowded London. But I found that Henley was 
merciful to dumb beasts. He did not intend 
to trouble the horse, but proposed to make it in 
a walk. 

I gasped, but said nothing. Henley has a 
hypnotic way about him. 

He is an athlete, and when we left his ofiice 
he made for the Thames embankment at an 
energetic heel and toe clip that gave me vertigo 
to look at. I trotted along beside him like a 
faithful and much abused dog. He is six feet 
three and has legs in proportion, while my build 
is not heroic, and six weeks of continuous sight- 
seeing in torrid weather is not the sort of thing 
to train a man down or up to athletic sports. 



no Cheer Up 

^^ Say," I panted, with lolling tongue, ^^ ca-n't — 
we — ta-ke — a — cab? " 

^^What, for a mile? Nonsense, man. The 
walk will do you good." And he burst out 
a-whistling, totally oblivious of the fact that 
death from heat prostration was hovering over 
me. 

At Waterloo bridge I gave out. ^^A 'bus," 
I panted, and one happening to pass at that 
moment, Henley indulgently let me board it 
and followed me himself. 

^^Ah, the pleasures of the country," sang he 
blithely. He looked hot, but he did not seem 
to mind it. As for me, wave after wave of 
deadly dry heat surged from my heart to every 
pore of my body. My tongue clave to the roof 
of my mouth and my brain seemed bursting 
with the heat. Still we were going to lovely 
Richmond to cool off. 

Arrived at the station, Henley found that the 
train for Richmond had not waited for us, but 



Cheer Up 1 1 1 

had just gone, and the next would not go for 
fifty minutes. 

^^ Quite so/' said he. ^^Very good. We'll 
take a train to Kew Gardens and then walk up 
the banks of the Thames to Richmond. Far 
preferable to train. Have you ever seen Kew 
Gardens?" 

I foolishly said I had not. I should have 
said that I had been born in Kew Gardens and 
hated the sight of them. Then we might have 
sat and baked where we were, instead of going 
off to be baked miles distant. 

I don't think he waited for my answer. At 
any rate, in a moment he had tickets for Kew 
Gardens, and we were racing down the platform 
to get a train that was due to leave at once. 

We reached it and piled into a stuffy compart- 
ment. Fortunately, we were alone. It is better 
to fry alone than to fry collectively like slices 
of bacon. 

^^This is cool compared to the underground," 



112 Cheer Up 

said Henley, as he saw me mopping my brow. 
If I had never been in the underground railway 
I should have doubted his veracity, but once I 
courted death for three stations in that sizzling 
vacuum, and then, like a rescued miner, I was 
drawn up to home and friends, and — mother: 
so I believed him. 

Of course, the train did not start on time. 
The value of punctuality is an unknown quan- 
tity on local trains in the Old World. 

When we finally did start, the air came into 
the carriage in thick, hot blasts, and ever and 
anon the hideous, sharp whistle pierced my ears, 
although pierced ears went out of fashion in 
America years ago. 

I shuddered and gasped alternately as we 
sped past dismal, dreary, smoke -begrimed 
tenements, and at last we arrived at Kew 
Bridge. 

If I could have stepped at once into the gar- 
dens, or even into a cab, I might have found the 



Cheer Up 113 

coolness for which I had come so far, but Hen- 
ley said, ^'Hardly necessary to ride. Just 
around the corner." And so he resumed his six- 
day- walking-match-championship-of-the-world- 
Madison- Square - Garden - admission - one - dollar 
gait, and I cantered along after him, with my 
heart beating wildly and imploring me to stop. 

^'Luncheons are expensive at the Star and 
Garter at Richmond, and, anyhow, we're too 
late for lunch and too early for dinner. Suppose 
we have a little snack at some place here." 
Thus spake Henley. 

Again my heart sank. I had, somehow, 
looked forward to Southdown mutton and 
Champion of England peas and Bass' ale on 
the terrace at the Star and Garter. However, I 
was too weak to resist my friend Henley. He 
was running things, literally running things, 
and I was one of the things. We were passing 
a row of humble little dwelling-houses as he 
spoke — dwelling-houses that had opened their 



114 Cheer Up 

doors to catch the transient stranger. "Lun- 
cheon, one shiUing." So the signs read, and 
the shilling mark should have been our safe- 
guard, but it wasn't. I think that the heat had 
made me idiotic, but Henley did not seem to be 
hot, and I can account for his action on one 
supposition only, and I hesitate 

Well, we passed two of the little houses in 
safety, but through the open door of the third 
I saw a glimpse of wistaria and purple clematis 
and a little table set temptingly under the trees, 
and it called to mind a delightful and cheap 
lunch at Charenton in Paris, and I said, ''My 
instinct tells me that this is the place for us." 

To be candid, my instinct was no better than 
that of a hen. At the risk of wounding its 
feelings I say so. We went through the hallway 
and out into the garden, and found that the 
brick walls were volleying the heat across the 
yard in waves of intense strength. I staggered 
to a seat and sat down, and Henley ordered cold 



Cheer Up 115 

roast beef and lettuce, and as they had no 
alcohoHc drinks, he called for ginger beer. 

^^The good old roast beef of England," I 
said before it came. Old it was, beyond a 
doubt, but it was not good. Nay, nay, it was 
not good. Henley, who is hasty in all his 
movements, devoured it all before he discovered 
that it was anything but good, but I, although 
an American, am more deliberate, and I had 
time to discover that it had been too long away 
from its mother, and I contented myself with 
the lettuce, dressed entirely with vinegar, whose 
mother was vitriol. 

The ginger beer was nice and warm, almost 
as warm as the day was. The flies found us out 
before we were waited on, and we did not linger 
for an after-luncheon cigarette, but departed at 
once for Kew Gardens. ... 

Oh, how lovely Kew Gardens must be in 
cool weather; in weather that is not so warm 
that you expect to see people falling like rain. 



1 16 Cheer Up 

Hot as I was, I could not repress my admiration 
for the noble trees, the vast lawns, the diminu- 
tive tiger lilies. 

^Xome, let us go into the hothouse and see 
the tropical plants," said Henley, airily. I 
looked at him in astonishment, but the fellow 
meant it, and with an agonized thought of my 
little ones across seas, I followed him toward the 
great glass inferno. 

Once, years ago, I visited the smelting-room 
of a brass mill in Connecticut and saw the mer- 
cury keeping at 130 with the greatest ease, and 
when I stepped into that Kew conservatory I 
wished with all my heart that I was back in the 
brass mill. Oh, how the trees and shrubs 
grew in that heat. I was afraid that they would 
burst their prison. I could hear my brain 
frying and spattering against the confines of 
my skull. 

And that Henley, not content, must needs 
lead me up a winding staircase to the top of 



Cheer Up 117 

the hothouse just so that I could feel from per- 
sonal observation that it was hotter near the top. 
My friendship was strained to the point of 
severing while I was up there, and when we 
came down I fell out of doors and felt the cool 
sun shining on me, and thanked heaven that I 
had escaped from the fiery furnace. Poor 
Abednego! 

But the respite was only momentary. The 
sun was not really cool after I had walked a few 
rods. It beat down upon me like a fiery mist, 
and I shuffled along expecting collapse at every 
moment and rather wishing that it would hurry 
up and end my sufferings. And that exasperat- 
ing Henley was as cool as possible and as full 
of vitality as when he started. 

^^ Hurry up," said he. ^^ We'll walk to Rich- 
mond. It's not far," 

How we ever got across that burning, though 
beautiful, plain to the river I do not know. But 
when we reached its banks I actually found 



1 1 8 Cheer Up 

relief. That river, the lovely Thames, was the 
one pleasant memory of an otherwise frightful 
trip. Lazy barges floated by, still more lazy 
swans followed by peeping cygnets swam down 
with the current, busy little steam tugs rushed 
up the river making cooling breezes, and I felt 
that here was our destination; here was the 
place to stop and enjoy nature and taste the 
solace of '^ tired nature's sweet restorer." Ah, 
yes, to sleep under an umbrageous oak, whose 
branches had waved welcome to kings as they 
passed by. 

But the cry of Henley was, ^^On to Rich- 
mond." Thus does history repeat itself. 

All too soon we left the banks of the pretty 
river and began to climb hills, and found our- 
selves once more in a town with hot pavements 
and hotter children out for the hottest airings 
with super-heated nurses. Up, up, up until we 
came to a lovely terrace that commanded a view 
of miles and miles of the Thames. Ah, what 



cheer Up 119 

a place to sit and cool off! But Henley 
said: 

^^ What's the matter with you, old man? I 
begin to think that you Americans lack energy. 
Come, we'll have a claret cup at the Star and 
Garter." 

Behold us at last at the Star and Garter. 
But did we sit on the lovely terrace and allow 
the Surrey breezes to cool our fevered brows? 
Not much. The wine-room was indoors, and 
every window was shut, save a ventilating sash. 
Behind the bar a blowsy barmaid like a stranded 
fish gasped with the heat. We ordered our 
claret cup and drank it as fast as we could, so 
that we might reach the open air before the 
stroke came. For now, even Henley was hot. 

We paid our reckoning and rushed out of 
doors. Beyond us lay cool and ancient woods. 
Soon the moon would be up, and we could rest 
and refresh ourselves and forget that heat had 
ever been. 



I20 Cheer Up 

But this was to he a veritable nightmare of an 
experience. Henley looked at his watch and 
said, ^^Got to catch the next train back. I'm 
awfully sorry, but my wife expects company to 
dinner, and I must do the honors. Make one 
of us.'' 

Why did I not have the courage to refuse and 
stay by myself in the cool woods and keep away 
from London until the ^^wee sma' hours"? 
Why does one do any and all the foolish things 
that fill up a nightmare? I accepted his invi- 
tation, and the next minute I was sprinting to 
catch the train. . . . 

That evening the moon rose, cool and serene, 
flooding the Thames at Richmond with silver 
radiance, but of that I wotted nothing. I was 
having brain fever in Henley's spare room in 
torrid London, 



cheer Up 121 



DOES it worry you to have your husband 
bring some men home to dinner? I 
mean, do you feel afraid that your guest will 
notice that you have a misfit set of table ware 
and that your maid is not well trained? 

Recollect that if your guest notices those things 
to your detriment he is not worthy of you. 

You are just as good as the best person who 
could possibly visit you. If you're not, it's 
your own fault. 

Do the best you can with your service, be sure 
to have your food well cooked and palatably 
seasoned, and treat your guest as simply as you 
know how. 

If he acts as if he were better than you he 
surely is not as good as you. If he accepts your 
hospitality in the spirit in which you offer it he 
is all right and you'd better have him out again. 

But it is not worth while for either you or your 



12 2 Cheer Up 

husband to bother with people who cannot 
accept your ways of living. 

If the man who is coming out awes you be- 
cause he is rich, try to remember some ancestor 
of yours who made the world better worth 
living in. If your guest awes you because of 
his culture, remember that you are trying to 
make life worth living to your husband and your 
children (perhaps you're not, but you really 
ought to). 

But if the man who is coming awes you be- 
cause of his blue blood, remember that kind 
hearts are more than coronets and tell him his 
grandmother was a monkey. It'll break the 
ice. 




WON'T you please keep your big dog out 
of our flower bed? 
I know how you like him. Used to have a 



Cheer Up 123 

worthless dog myself once that I adored. He 
snapped at people's heels and I said it was his 
playful way. He chased wheelmen until he 
nearly lost his sight — too much ammonia in 
the gun — but I went on saying it was only his 
way, and, do you know, I got to be unpopular 
after a while, and felt it, too, and never laid it 
to the dog until he died and people began com- 
ing to see me again. 

I like dogs and I like people that like dogs, 
but I think that a dog who is so fond of flowers 
that he comes and lies down on your wife's 
best bed of lilies-of-the-valley — why, he ought 
to be kept in his own yard, because lilies that 
have bedded a dog are never the same after- 
ward. 

My rights end where yours begin, and your 
rights end where mine begin, and you have no 
right to let your bloodhound bowl my baby 
over. It's fun for the bloodhound but it's 
death to my baby, and let me tell you that my 



124 Cheer Up 

baby is worth all the bloodhounds that ever 
bled. 

I see my voice is rising, and if I don't stop 
you and I will cease to be on friendly terms, 
but please remember that your neighbor's gar- 
den is a mighty poor lounging place for your 
dog, and if you hate to chain him up then send 
him to the country. 

None of your friends will think the worse of 
you for it, and we'll put in some more hyacinth 
bulbs for next season. 




IT was a magnificent morning, and I sat on 
the Bluffs at Block Island looking out to 
sea and watching the fleet of fishing smacks that 
were so far out that one might fancy them white 
butterflies hovering over a field of June grass. 
I was in high spirits and felt like proclaiming the 



Cheer Up 125 

fact to the whole world. Who could fail to be 
impressed by the perfection of the day? 

Just then Benton sauntered up. He's a good 
fellow, is Benton, but he is apt to be much aware 
of himself. 

"Morning, Ben. Isn't this a day to go to 
glory in, perfectly satisfied? Isn't the world all 
right? to paraphrase Browning." 

"Nice day, but I don't feel up to the scratch. 
Guess my liver's gone back on me. When I 
wake up I see spots. I have no appetite, my 
legs are as heavy as lead, and I am feverish." 

"La-and sakes, what ad. did you copy that 
from?" 

"I wish it had been an ad. for there might be 
a testimonial of my cure at the end, but it isn't. 
It's just the way I feel." 

"Well, as an immortal Bowery character put 
it, ^Fergit it.' Chase yourself away from your 
identity. Climb out of yourself and view the 
wreck with equanimity and sit there and think 



126 Cheer Up 

of what it means to be alive on a day like this. 
But whatever you do, Ben, don't take it for 
granted that everybody you meet is a doctor 
who is dying to hear your symptoms in hopes 
of getting a fat fee. I'm sorry you ate and 
drank too much last night, but I'm a durned 
sight sorrier you told me, because you don't feel 
any better for it and I feel worse. There's a 
rift in my lute. The day isn't what it was. 
Those white sails are a shade darker. Come, 
let's have a game of tennis, and we'll both feel 
better." 

He beat me six to two, and when we were 
leaving the court he said, ^^I feel like a fighting 
cock, and isn't it a bully day?" 

^^Ben, it's the same old day it started out to 
be, only you tried to hit it in the solar plexus 
by putting yourself between every one and the 
prospect. Leave symptoms to the doctors, and 
if you must talk about health talk about mine, 
which is simply perfect. So long." 



Cheer Up 127 

TELL me a story, papa," said the little 
girl, and her father thereupon held the 
child in his lap, and with a twinkle in his eye, 
he said: 

^^Feth an' I will that, an' the name of me 
story is Xunnin' Larrikins.' Wance upon a 
toime there was a la-ad named Larry, an' they 
carled him Larrikins fer shorrt. An' wance 
his father was out plantin' peraties, an' the la-ad 
went to um an' axed would he tell him a story. 
An' the ould man said he'd be delighted to, an' 
would a story about a Frinchy do? An' Larry 
said it would, so his father began: 

^^^ Wance there was a Frinchy from Parrus, 
an' whiles he was drinkin' his red wine an' 
'atin' frogs on the sidewalk, his darter says, 
^^Mon pere, tell me a story, s'il vous plait." 
^^Avec plaisir," says he; ^'I can rayfuse ma 
petite cherie not a sing. 

Ver' many years aggo zere was a gra-ate 



U C iC 



12 8 Cheer Up 

beeg monstair of a Jairman man zat was weecked 
to every von, but he lofed hees daughtair ver' 
moosh, an' so ven he was dreenkin' hees beer 
she coam an' as' heem for un conte, an' 'e 
say: 

^^^^^^Ach, liebchen, dere is nutting dat I can 
reffewse you. Vat keint of a dale shall I geeve 
you? Ach, I know. It shall be about a plack 
man who resitet in Nord Amerika. He vas 
laazy unt goot for nicht, but he had a peeka- 
nini dat he all de time say to, ^^Ich Hebe dich," 
und ven he in dose cotton-fielts vas, dot cotton 
peekin', das kindchen say, '^I vish to hear some 
marchen, popchen." Und he say: 

"^^^^^^Why, mah li'l chil'. Ah had n' oughter 
stop fo' to talk, but seein' de oberseer ain' 
aroun'. Ah jes ez soon tell yo' one er dem tar- 
baby tales ez not. No, I won't needer. Ah'U 
tell yo' 'bout a crool Yankee dat lived up in de 
frozen Nort', 'way up neah Bawsten, an' he had 
a li'l gal dat he keered fo' a heap, an' one day he 



Cheer Up 129 

was mekkin' money, fas' eveh he could, an' his 
li'l gal as' him fo' a na'tive, an' he sayed: 

^^^^^^^^^Goshtallhemlock! but I ain't no hand 
ter tell sto-ries. Haowever, I did hear a purty 
slick one t'other day 'baout a Scotchman who 
lived in Edinburry, an' he hed a girl was like 
the appil of his eye, an' so one day, when she 
up an' ast him to tell her a sto-ry, he said: 

(iicccca u jyj-^ baimic, I dinna ken ower muckle 
in the way of folk-tales, but my auld mither used 
to tell me about a man who lived in Ireland an' 
who dearly lo'ed his chield. ^Tell me a story, 
papa,' said the little lass, and her father there- 
upon held the bairn in his lap, and wid a twinkle 
in his eye, he said: 

''"'^''^''^Yeth an' I wiU that, an' the name of 
me story is ^Xunnin' Larrikins.""""""" 

And he looked at the child, and she was 
asleep. 



130 Cheer Up 

NO man deserves to be a millionaire," 
said the socialist. 

He and the man with the honest face were seat 
mates on their way to Washington. 

"I don't agree with you," said the man with 
the honest face. ^'I think that the man who 
has wit enough to make a million deserves to 
keep it. There ain't a man living who wouldn't 
make a million if he knew how. Now take the 
case of my friend and neighbor, Sam Barker 
of Lewistown, Pennsylvania." 

^^What about him?" said the socialist. ^^ Isn't 
he the man that's running for Congress from out 
that way?" 

^^He is, and he's rich enough to be a senator, 
too. Well, ten years ago we were next door 
neighbors and we owned farms of about sixty 
acres each. Farms were worth about $10,000 
apiece. To-day I'm living on a poor salary 
and he's a millionaire, and all because he knew 



Cheer Up 131 

how to turn unusual things to account and I 
didn't." 

"Tell your tale," said the socialist, who natu- 
rally felt like being social. "Let's go into the 
smoker where we can be comfortable." 

So they went into the smoker and were com- 
fortable — that is, they inhaled all kinds of bad 
tobacco, and impregnated their clothes with stale 
smoke, and the man with the honest face told his 
story. 

"In 1890, I think it was, the accident hap- 
pened that ruined me and started Barker on the 
rise. Underneath our farms there was a large 
coal mine operated by a New York company. 
One day, when the crops were all garnered — 
as they say in hymns — a miner accidentally 
dropped a match on some coal that was pretty 
well seasoned and it caught fire, and before they 
realized it, that mine was burning to beat the 
band. There was coal to burn down there, and 
it burned. They let down as much of the 



132 Cheer Up 

Lewistown fire company as dared to go, but it 
was no use; the fire had got into the habit of 
burning coal and it went on burning." 

"I don't see any chance to make money yet," 
said the sociahst. 

^^Neither did I," said the man with the hon- 
est face, ''but Barker did. This was in Octo- 
ber and the ground had frozen up pretty tight, 
but day by day it grew hotter and hotter and 
thawed more and more, and at last I got into a 
panic and I said to Barker, 'I'd sell my farm 
for $1,000 if any one was fool enough to buy.' 
'I'm your fool,' said Barker, and he paid me 
cash and I lit out. Sam said he guessed he'd 
wait for a rise. I asked him if he meant a 
volcano, but he only smiled one of his inscru- 
tables and went on waiting as if heaven was com- 
ing his way. I moved into the center and put 
up at the hotel." 

"One hundred and twenty acres of land, all 
hot, and no takers," said the socialist. 



Cheer Up 133 

^^Not a taker. Well, winter came on and it 
was a hard one. Mercury dropped like lead 
and the snow fell like feathers, and pretty soon 
we were all but shut in. Seemed as if the North 
Pole had snapped off and fallen on us. Rail- 
roads blocked, provisions scarce and high, and 
coal higher yet, owing to the fire. But Sam 
didn't suffer a mite. The ground was so warm 
on his land that the snow melted as fast as it 
fell and mellowed up the earth, and he fell to 
and began to hire men to plow, same as if it 
was spring. Then we began to have an inkling 
of what he meant to do " 

^^ Truck farming in winter?" said the socialist. 

^'That's what we thought, but Sam had an 
idea better than that. He went to a Pittsburg 
millionaire and he induced him to back him — 
Sam always had an insinuating way about him 
— and the result was that he brought back a 
carload of men who went to work digging foun- 
dations for some big building. Air was so 



1 34 Cheer Up 

balmy on the place that the men worked in their 
undershirts, and Sam had all the windows of his 
farmhouse open and only used a fire to cook 
with. Men slept on the ground at night, same 
as if it was in the tropics. I waded out there in 
snow up to my neck one day, and when I reached 
there I was astonished at the change. Just 
left my ulster and fur cap and mittens on a tree, 
and even then I sweat some before I got to 
where he was superintending the men. I asked 
him what he was going to do, but he was too 
busy and too hot to talk, so I came away again 
and nearly froze to death on the way back to the 
hotel. Pretty soon the New York papers were 
full of advertisements of the wonderful ' Florida 
in Pennsylvania.' ^Fine hotel, balmy air, mod- 
em improvements, table unsurpassed, golf, 
tennis, polo, automobile rink, weekly hops and 
no mosquitoes.'" 

^^ Weren't there really any mosquitoes?" 
asked the socialist. 



Cheer up 135 

"No, I think the heat killed them or else they 
didn't know how to embrace opportunities any 
better than I had. Well, sir, that house was 
booked full inside of a week, and then the trains 
began to bring 'em, and the local liveryman made 
a small fortune running sleighs out to the edge 
of the farm on the arrival of every train. Barker 
had darkies with fans to keep the guests cool 
and porters to carry them on sedan chairs to 
the hotel." 

"Eastern ideas." 

"Yes, sir; well, he was born 'way down East 
in Maine. But his place was a pretty sight; 
trees all blooming and full of leaves and palms 
and fig trees also, and the grass and daisies and 
buttercups and asters too, by George, all grow- 
ing side by side and golden rod coming along. 
The guests enjoyed it down to the ground. 
White duck suits and perspiration, and the na- 
tives roundabout with heavy coats and chil- 
blains." 



136 Cheer Up 

^^Any birds?" 

"Not at first, but Barker sent South and got 
a lot and released 'em, and then the air was full 
of song. Well, he got ten dollars a day from 
every man, woman, child and servant, and after 
the place had been running four months, and 
he saw that the earth was beginning to get ex- 
hausted and dry he sold out to some western 
capitalists for a cool million, and just in time, 
too, for the coal company had been at work 
trying to put out the fire, and it finally succeeded 
in leading Paultan Lake down to the mouth of 
the pit " 

"And then I'll bet there was an explosion, 
wasn't there?" 

"No, because they'd drilled holes all around 
and the steam came up through 'em like so 
many geysers. But that frightened the guests 
and they began to leave, and then the earth 
cooled when the fire was put out, and as there 
wasn't the least bit of heating apparatus in the 



Cheer Up 137 

hotel, and as that March was a very gusty, cold 
month, the house was soon empty, and then 
they had to shut up the hotel and go into bank- 
ruptcy. But Barker was all right with his 
million, and now I want to ask you if he didn't 
deserve his money?" 

^^Well, that was an exceptional case, and he 
certainly did. But I should think that his meat 
bill would have ruined him. You said that 
provisions were high and the roads were 
blocked " 

"Why, yes, but he raised his own vegetables 
right off the farm; tomatoes, peas, potatoes, 
beans, corn, lettuce, everything growing in 
half the time because they were forced by the 
coal fire beneath " 

"But how about his meat?" 

"Why, I forgot to say he advertised that none 
need apply for board except out and out vege- 
tarians, so he didn't need an ounce of meat." 



138 Cheer Up 

ONCE there was a little fish that lived in 
the Indian ocean, but he used to swim 
through the Antarctic ocean to the Pacific ocean, 
to the Arctic ocean, to the Atlantic ocean. And 
once, when he was swimming in the Atlantic 
ocean, he saw a little girl who lived on the At- 
lantic shore. She had long curls and short 
dresses, and a cheek each side of her face, and 
an eye above each cheek, and a mouth some- 
where or other, and, right in the middle of her 
face, she had the dearest nosey-posey you ever 
saw. And she was trying to dig up all the sand 
on the Atlantic shore, to put it into her pail, 
and she was afraid that the pail wasn't quite 
big enough, so she began to cry. 

Now, the little fish hated to see little girls 
cry, so he said, ^^ Little girl, little girl, will you 
go for a ride? I am only going through the 
Atlantic ocean, and the Arctic ocean, and the 
Pacific ocean, and the Antarctic ocean, and the 



Cheer Up 139 

Indian ocean, and if you don't mind riding 
pick-a-back, like your brothers, I'll be glad to 
take you along. There's a quite too awfully 
lovely beach on the edge of the Indian ocean, 
and I think there is a much larger pail there." 

And oh, how glad the little girl was! She 
hopped up and down, first on one leg, and 
then on the other leg, and then on both legs, 
and then she left the pail and the shovel and 
ran down and jumped on the little fish's back. 

But then she remembered that it would be 
Christmas day in a few days, and she did not 
want to miss that, so she asked the little fish 
if he could surely get her back in time. And 
he laughed clear back to his fins, and said of 
course he'd be back in time, and he'd bring back 
presents with him, so that she could give her 
mother and grandmother gifts from various 
countries. 

And then the little fish swam out of the 
Atlantic ocean into the Arctic ocean as fast as 



140 cheer Up 

he could. And the little girl said, ^^This is 
lovely, fishy dear, but I am afraid that I am 
getting my feet wet, and when my feet are wet 
I always sneeze, and it makes my eyes cry and 
my nosey-posey gets red and rosy." 

And then she sneezed three times. And the 
little fish said, ^^What are you doing up there?" 

And the little girl said, ^'I am sneezing." 

''Oh my, oh my," said the little fish, ''but 
that's too bad. But here comes an old fish that 
has lots of queer things, and I dare say he has 
a hanky." 

So the old fish came up and the little girl 
asked him if he had a hanky for her eyes, and 
he said that he had, and he gave it to her. And 
she said: 

"Thanky, thanky 
For the hanky." 

But when she had wiped her eyes, and had 
rubbed her dear little nosey-posey, she dropped 



Cheer Up 141 

the hanky into the ocean, because she had no 
pocket. 

But her feet did not get any dryer, and as 
she kept them in the water all the time, I sup- 
pose that must be the reason. 

Finally she asked, ^^Is this the Arctic ocean? ^' 

And the little fish said, ^'Oh, yes." 

Then said the little girl, ^^I guess I'm cold, for 

you know it was a warm day on the Atlantic 

shore and I did not have my coat on. I am 

quite sure that I am cold, if this is the Arctic 



ocean." 



"Oh dear," said the little fish, "then I must 
get you a seal skin." 

Just then a seal came swimming by, and the 
little fish said, "Good-day, and how are you, 
and have you an old seal skin that you don't 
want?" 

And the seal said, "Why, yes; I'll let you 
have my own. I really don't need it." So 
he took off his seal skin and gave it to the little 



142 Cheer Up 

fish, and he gave it to the little girl, who put it 
on and said: 

^^It fits as snug as any eel skin. 
Thanky, thanky for the seal skin." 

Finally it got to be supper time, and the little 
girl said, ^^I am very hungry." 

^'Oh my, oh my," said the little fish, "but 
that's too bad. Maybe we'll meet the jelly- 
fish and you can buy some jelly." 

The little girl was too small to know that 
they make the jelly out of the ocean currents, 
but when the jelly fish came along, she bought 
some jelly, and fed some to the little fish and 
more to herself; because she knew she was 
fond of jelly, and she was not sure about the 
little fish. 

And they went through the Arctic ocean to 
the Pacific ocean, and to the Antarctic ocean, 
and, at last, they came to the Indian ocean and 
the Indian shore. 



Cheer Up 143 

And right on the edge of the Indian shore 
stood an Indian man eating Indian meal out 
of a clam shell. And by his side was a beauty 
pail, most five times as big as the one the little 
girl had left behind. 

And the fish would have swum ashore to get 
the pail, but the man waved the clam shell at 
them with both hands and said : 

^^Go away, go away, you annoy me!" 

So, as neither the fish nor the little girl liked 
to annoy people, and especially Indian people, 
who were sure to have Indian clubs near at 
hand, they came away. But they were lucky 
enough to find an India shawl floating in the 
water and the little girl spread it on her lap. 

But now she began to be sorry that she had 
not gone ashore, for the shawl made her sippy- 
soppy wet. 

And she said, '^I am getting my lap wet, and 
I am still getting my feet wet, and when my 
feet are wet I always sneeze, and it makes 



144 Cheer Up 

my eyes cry and nosey-posey gets red and 
rosy." 

And then she sneezed three times. 

And the little fish said, '^What are you doing 
up there?" 

And the little girl said, ^^I am sneezing." 

And the little fish said : 

^^Oh my, oh my, but that's too bad. 
Where is the hanky that you had?" 

And the little girl said, ^'I dropped it in the 
water, for I had no pocket." 

So the little fish said, ^^Well, here's the 
brother of the fish we met in the Arctic ocean, 
and he, too, has lots of queer things, and I dare 
say he has a hanky." So the old fish came up, 
and the little girl asked him if he had a hanky 
for her eyes, and he said that he had, and he 
gave it to her. 

And she said: 

'^Thanky, thanky 
For the hanky." 



Cheer Up 145 

But when she had wiped her eyes, and rubbed 
her dear Httle nosey-posey, she dropped the 
hanky into the ocean, because she still had no 
pocket. 

And after that the little fish swam through 
the Antarctic ocean, and he would have gotten 
a present there, but all the stores were shut; 
and then he went to the Pacific ocean, but there 
were no stores there, and then he went to the 
Arctic ocean, but the little girl did not want to 
stop there, because it was cold, and the Eskimo 
people looked angry when they saw her seal 
skin; and then they came to the Atlantic ocean, 
and shortly after to the Atlantic shore. 

And the little girl jumped off the little fish's 

back, and kissed him on the tip of his wet little 

nose and said: 

'^Thanky for the lovely ride 
Through the ocean's flowing tide." 

And the little fish said, ^^Good-by, and try 
not to get your feet any wetter." 



146 Cheer Up 

And the little girl promised to try, and then 
she sat down on the shore to dry them; and it 
was Christmas morning before they were quite 
dry; and all that time she dug in the sand, and 
filled her pail and wondered what her mother 
and grandmother would say when they saw her. 

And on Christmas morning she went up to 
the house, and found her mother and her 
grandmother just starting out to look for her. 
For she had been gone four days, and they were 
beginning to worry. 

^^ Merry Christmas!" said she. ^^Here is a 
seal skin for you, mother, and an India shawl 
for grandmother." 

Then her mother and grandmother both 
kissed her, and gave her a bright penny between 
them, and the dear little girl went right down 
to the store and bought a mackintosh for her 
dear little friend, the little fish, and sent it to 
him by the next mail, and now when he swims 
through the Indian ocean, and the Antarctic 



Cheer Up 147 

ocean, and the Pacific ocean, and the Arctic 
ocean, and the Atlantic ocean, he never gets 
wet. 

And neither does the dear Httle girl, for she 
stays on shore. 




HOLIDAYS are instituted and holidays are 
abolished even as time works its changes, 
but the passing of the New York New Year's 
day has not been balanced by the acquisition of 
any holiday of equal interest. 

I call to mind one house where New Year's 
day, to the younger members of the household 
at least, was second in charm only to Christmas. 
Indeed, it was a sort of little Christmas, for there 
were sure to be one or two gifts for the children 
and as much feasting as on that great day, 
although the eatables were sprinkled through 



148 Cheer Up 



the whole of the festival instead of being served 
at one groaning table in the afternoon. 

The early morning had not the charm of 
Christmas and Independence day. Indeed, it 
was a little dull, for New Year's day did not 
really begin until the first caller had come. 
Still, there was expectancy in the air, and there 
was the annual conversion of the covered fire- 
place into an open grate with cannel-coal, that 
burned with a delicate odor that somehow 
seemed associated with David Copperfield, 
although it might be hard to establish the 
connection. 

The first caller was apt to be a rich cousin 
who was engaged in the tea trade, and who had 
actually been to Japan. He was tall and thin 
and distinguished-looking, with humorous eyes, 
and a way of talking to the two youngsters that 
each year confirmed them in the opinion that he 
was the drollest of mortals, although, I fancy, 
his jests were as cut-and-dried as his tea. He 



Cheer Up 149 

was sure to bring gifts, no less than a penny each 
for the two boys, and a box of kid gloves for 
the sister entering on womanhood. One of his 
jokes is so intimately associated with New Year's 
day that I am sure he must have made it every 
time he came, which was only on that holiday. 
It was in the form of a conundrum, and the 
query was, ^^What was Joan of Arc made of?" 
the answer being, ^'Maid of Orleans." I re- 
member that one of the boys imagined that Joan 
of Arc, whoever she was, must be very sticky to 
be made of molasses; but although he did not 
see the joke for several y^ars, he always laughed 
as heartily as his elder brother, and wished 
New Year's day came oftener. 

The rich cousin took his departure, and be- 
fore there was time to discuss him or to gloat 
over the pennies, the bell would ring and a 
gentleman of the old school would be announced. 
He was short and stout. He had been best man 
at grandmother's wedding, and the little boys 



150 Cheer Up 

knew that she admired him; but he gave no 
pennies, and naturally could not vie with the 
rich tea cousin. However, he was civil to the 
youngsters and did not seem annoyed at their 
presence, as Mr. Hewlett did, a little, dried-up 
man with trembling hands and twitching eyes 
and a nose with the blush of early morning in it. 
Mr. Hewlett always partook of refreshment, 
and smacked his lips with a disappointed air 
at the first taste of the lemonade, missing the 
*^ stick." Grandmother had pronounced views 
as to the morality of serving anything of an 
intoxicating nature on New Year's day. As she 
said, ^'It would not matter if ours were the only 
house visited, but when a man sets out to call on 
fifty people, and takes a little wine at each 
house, he is none the better for it; and besides, 
it is a poor example for young men and a bad 
beginning for the new year." Which was 
eminently correct and wise, but one of the little 
boys used to think it would be a very pleasant 



cheer Up 151 

thing to take a little at every house, so as to 
compare the flavors. 

There were those who called who relied upon 
none of the conventional forms of speech, and 
these, to childish imaginations, seemed out of 
touch with the spirit of the day. One could 
talk of the opera and Parepa-Rosa and Theodore 
Thomas and Pauline Lucca any day, but the 
main thing to be accomplished on New Year's 
day was a certain number of calls made on one 
hand, and a certain number received on the 
other. That being the game, why not play it 
and compare notes? So the young man who 
came in and said, ^^ Happy New Year! Lovely 
day, isn't it? Do you think the custom is dying 
out? Yes, this is my twenty-fifth call. Jack 
BuUard and I are going to make fifty, and we'll 
really have to be going. Thanks, I believe I 
will; I remember your lemonade. Good-by. 
Happy New Year!" seemed to live up to the 
requirements of the day, and appealed more 



152 Cheer Up 



strongly to the imagination than the man who 
came and, without a word about the day or the 
customs or other calls, plunged into an animated 
talk with grandmother upon the comparative 
excellence of Campanini and Mario, or the 
charms of the Jenny Lind of years gone by. 
Jenny Lind — she or her counterfeit present- 
ment — was inside the cover of a trunk in the 
attic, and she had very soft eyes and queer 
clothes; but she seemed hardly a fit subject 
of conversation on a day that came but once in a 
whole year. 

So the hours passed. In the afternoon the 
two boys would call upon six or seven in the 
near vicinity, and the length of their calls was 
to be gaged by the breadth of the lunch-table. 
There was one lady whom they disliked ex- 
ceedingly, and who hated children, but oh, what 
delicious wine-jelly she had, and her sponge- 
cake would make a boy forget home. She 
generally told the boys when she thought they 



Cheer Up 153 

had eaten enough, and she never by any chance 
hit it right; but after several hints they would 
take up their hats and go to call on some one 
whose charm of manner, great as it was, did not 
make up to them for the paucity of her New 
Year's offering. 

As the boys grew older they called with their 
father on various families, and heard ad nause- 
am^ ^^How much that boy does look like his 
mother!" or, ^^I'U venture that they are a hand- 
ful," when they were not, by any means, or at 
least one of them was not; I do not know but 
the other was. 

There was one house much beloved of the 
youngsters, and aside from the excellent lun- 
cheon that was set there, it had another point 
of interest, for it was rumored that the hostess, 
who was a very intellectual woman and a lover 
of children withal, was in the habit of saying, 
^^The devil!" when occasion warranted, and 
the boys always lived in the hope that she would 



154 Cheer Up 

say it while they were present. But she never 
did, although they called there for years. How 
little some people try to live up to their repu- 
tations! 

There was a place to which one of the lads 
once went with his father, and as the talk was 
dull and the table small, he soon felt it was time 
to depart, and told his father so. Never will he 
forget his inward rage nor his outward morti- 
fication when Mrs. S said, '^It is not your 

place, young man, to say when it is time to go." 
It took at least two lunches to fetch his spirit 
back, and he never called there again. The 
next year he waited outside while his father 
went in. So great an impression does an un- 
premeditated speech sometimes make upon the 
wax-like mind of youth. 

Once, to the great joy of the children, a 
gentleman came who had called not wisely but 
too well, and when he entered the house he did 
not know that he was unacquainted with any one 



cheer Up 155 

in it. The loss was his, but he did not know 
that either. In fact, the boys' father did not 
think it worth while for him to stay long enough 
to enunciate the usual commonplaces, although 
I am sure that his enunciation would have been 
a delight to all. He took his departure with 
many incoherent murmurings, and an antici- 
pated excitement was quashed. 

Bedtime followed, and the children lay, too 
excited to sleep, and listened to belated callers 
as they rolled either in their carriages or their 
gait over the rough cobblestones, for New York 
at that time was not noted for perfect paving. 
At last they slept, to dream of calling at a house 
where the lunch-table was a mile long and where 
one had to eat everything in sight or be con- 
sidered rude. 

One of the children once spent his Christmas 
vacation in Boston, and he well remembers his 
shock on finding that New Year's day was not 
observed even as a legal holiday, much less as 



156 Cheer Up 

a time for making friendly calls. It seemed a 
profanation to him for men to go to their places 
of business on a day that might have been made 
so delightful. But even for New York the day 
was doomed, and although it has not ceased to 
be a legal holiday, the peculiar bouquet which 
it formerly held is departed forever, nothing but 
the fragrance of old associations remaining. 

This result was brought about by the creeping 
in of abuses — abuses on the part of both callers 
and ^^callees," if one may be pardoned a coined 
word. It often happened that young business 
associates, clerks in the same office, would de- 
cide to go calling together — a beautiful fashion, 
if they had possessed in common the same circle 
of acquaintances. But Clarence Vanderpenter 
had one set of friends, while Terence MacHana- 
han had a different set, and Otto MuUer knew 
no one that the others knew. Nevertheless, 
Clarence and Terence and Otto, and sometimes 
Tammas, Ricardo and Henri, would hire a 



Cheer Up 157 

coach, and would stick to one another like burrs, 
and throughout the long day they would make 
calls that, fortunately, lasted only long enough 
to enable them to be presented to people whom 
all but one were seeing for the first and, in all 
probability, for the last time, and then with a 
sextet of hurried ^^ Happy New Years," lan- 
guidly responded to by bored and tired ladies, 
they would depart to make their ^^one hundred 
and sixth." 

One receives the call of a friend with joy; 
it is possible to accept the call of the friend of 
a friend with equanimity, and there have been 
instances where the latter has been promptly 
advanced to the position of friend ; but when it 
gets to be the friend of a friend of a friend, 
patience ceases to be a virtue, and hence the 
wicker basket. 

The wicker basket might mean that the people 
who had caused it to be hung on the door-bell 
were out of town — although in those days 



1 5 8 Cheer Up 

people were not in the habit of going out of 
town in the winter as much as they do now — 
but it was more Hkely to mean that they were 
merely ^^not at home" to the Amalgamated 
Callers. Of course, if you were on terms of 
close intimacy with the owners of the wicker 
basket, you could pull it and the bell, and be 
admitted to the drawing-room, where, behind 
closed blinds, they were receiving those of the 
inner circle; but just as the Amalgamated Cal- 
lers had given offense, so the Sign of the Wicker 
Basket, unless it were hung with mourning, 
often frightened or piqued away real friends, 
and thus two disastrous blows were dealt to the 
pretty custom of giving and receiving calls. 

To reach a house where one had been wont 
to pay annual calls, and wherein dwelt a maiden 
whose charms of face and manner lingered in 
the recollection throughout the four seasons — 
a house wherein a feast fit for the gods had been 
spread — to come to such a house and to see the 



Cheer Up 159 

tantalizing wicker basket dangling mockingly 
from the bell-handle, was to receive a dual 
thrust — at the heart and at its reputed entrance. 

I have heard of mischievous youths who ex- 
changed the cards in baskets on different blocks. 
Imagine, then, the wonderment of those in a 
house when the maid took in the basket and 
they found the calling-cards of dozens of un- 
known persons ! Abram Suydam Rapelje's card 
would mean much to the Van Twillers, at whose 
house he had left it, but to the Bills it meant 
nothing, while Eliphalet Worthington's card 
was equally without meaning to the Van Twil- 
lers. A broken friendship might well have 
traced its source to this unauthorized exchange 
of cards. 

The mania for adding names to one's calling- 
lists was strong in the minds of young girls who 
were receiving with their mothers and aunts, 
and who compared notes with their nearest 
neighbors by sending an accommodating brother 



i6o Cheer Up 

to find out who had made the greatest progress 
in the game of receiving calls. With these 
thoughtless youngsters all were fish that came 
to their net, and callers even to the sixth degree 
of dilution were jotted down on their penciled 
lists. 

In those days New York and Brooklyn were 
not cities of magnificent distances, and a man's 
acquaintances generally lived within a radius 
of a few miles, easily covered by foot or by four 
wheels — "wheels" being then unknown. It 
would have been a sight for the gods if a 
young man, clad in a frock-coat or in evening 
clothes, had made calls on an old-fashioned 
"ordinary" (how extraordinary they have be- 
come!), high- wheeled and perilous. But riding 
the bicycle was then a very serious sport, and 
one not to be entered into lightly or by the 
many. And it was the many who paid calls. 

It was in Brooklyn that the custom held on 
longest, and there a young man's social acquain- 



Cheer Up i6i 

tances lived either on the Heights or on the Hill, 
and he could attend to the latter in a short fore- 
noon, and give afternoon and evening to the 
Heights. As for the New Yorker, he need not 
travel much above Fifty-ninth street or far 
below the beginning of the numbered streets 
to reach all his calling acquaintances. 

As Brooklyn became more and more attached 
to New York, pending the wedding that later 
joined them, and as New York pushed north- 
ward mile after mile, and Brooklyn spread out 
in all directions, a man needed most of the day 
for traveling from place to place, and the cozy, 
intimate call became an impossibility. So, for 
one reason after another, the day fell into 
disuse. 

Here and there on New Year's day delightful 
old tea-merchants and gentlemen with iron-gray 
^^Burnsides" pay their courtly calls as in the 
days of long ago, and here and there, in old- 
fashioned localities, sweet elderly ladies walk 



1 62 Cheer Up 

into ancient parlors with words of New Year 
greeting, and perhaps fall to discussing old-time 
opera favorites, comparing Jean de Reszke with 
Brignoli, and Mme. Sembrich with Signora 
Parepa-Rosa; but for the youth of New York 
the day is one impossible to bring back, and 
its charms are incommunicable. 




WHEN Henry Corbould came home at 
twelve o'clock at night and saw a light 
in his study he was not surprised, as he had been 
expecting his brother Chauncey to come on 
from Boston, and Chauncey always made him- 
self at home. Henry was rather glad than 
otherwise. He had been to a dinner where he 
had been wined to an unusual degree for him, 
and the floodgates of his sociability were 
opened and he was just in the mood to chat with 



Cheer Up 163 

Chauncey concerning the art world in Boston 
and New York and perhaps to partake a Httle 
more of the cheering stuff. 

He put his key into the lock noiselessly, in- 
tending to surprise Chauncey in turn for the 
latter' s surprise. 

Slowly the door opened, slowly and, strange 
to say, without noise, and Henry, advancing 
through the dimly lighted hall with all the cau- 
tion of a burglar, stepped into the studio. 

There was a man there — it was not Chauncey 
but a housebreaker. He had a suit-case half 
packed with silver- ware, and he was in the act 
of taking a pair of very handsome cloissonne 
vases from the mantel when Henry entered. 

The typical burglar wears a rough cap with 
ear tabs, a pea-jacket and a black mask, but 
this man was attired quite modishly and would 
not have excited suspicion in any man's house 
if he had been sitting at the evening lamp 
reading. 



164 Cheer Up 

He turned as Henry entered and slowly drew 
his hand from his hip pocket, disclosing a pistol. 

^^Good-evening," said he, pointing it directly 
at Henry's temple and lightly caressing the 
trigger. ^^I thought that you and your mother 
and the maids had retired. Been out dining, 
eh? Won't you sit down?" 

Henry sat down and mechanically removed 
his hat. He was really not at all pleased to find 
a burglar in his study instead of his brother 
Chauncey, but he had always believed in the 
convincing quality of cold lead, even if it did 
not slip from the barrel, and it would not be 
his fault if the cartridge were exploded. 

The burglar picked up Henry's hat, which 
had been on the study table and placed it on his 
own head. It was a silk hat of the latest mode 
and it was becoming to the burglar. Henry 
could not help noticing what a gentlemanly man 
it was who was helping himself to his mother's 
bric-a-brac. 



Cheer Up 165 

" Our heads are the same shape. If you don't 
mind wearing a derby we'll exchange. I think 
that you understand that I can whip this thing 
out again in no time (putting his pistol away) 
and I'm sure that you will make no outcry. If 
I hadn't foohshly supposed that you were safe 
in bed I would have waited until later, because 
I hate to alarm a man unnecessarily. I had 
occasion to call here the other day when the 
front door was left open and the maid was 
talking to the girl next door, and I took a decided 
fancy to your silver and knicknacks generally. 
Some one in the family has a cultivated taste. 
I imagine it's your mother." 

As he spoke he helped himself here and there, 
packing each thing away in the suit-case as he 
came to it. 

^^I say, I like your nerve," said Henry at 
last, but he said it with a certain difficulty. 
The heat of the room was having an unpleasant 
effect upon his tongue. 



1 66 Cheer Up 

'^I haven't a bit more nerve than I need my- 
self, so I can't let you have any of it if that's 
what you mean. Now I used to be very differ- 
ent. As a child, I was so shy that my mother 
despaired of my ever amounting to anything, 
but I stand pretty high in my profession, and 
I don't think I have much to fear from my rivals 
here in the East. I'm from San Francisco, 
myself." 

He talked steadily, much as a clever sleight- 
of-hand performer does, and Henry sat in a 
dazed state and watched him take mementoes 
of half a dozen trips to Europe, Egypt and 
Japan and put them away with a woman's 
deftness of touch in the roomy recesses of the 
suit-case. 

^^Got any whiskey?" asked the burglar. 

^^No," said Henry slowly, ^^but you'll find 
some port in the dining-room in the sideboard." 

^^ Hardly, my boy," said the burglar, gayly, 
"Your Uncle Dud doesn't wait on himself when 



Cheer Up 167 

he is the guest of another. Just go in and get 
me a bottle and one glass. You^ve had all you 
ought to for to-night, but I need a bracer, 
although I'm sorry it isn't whiskey. Port's 
rather soft." 

Henry had a hazy idea that the burglar would 
be green enough to go into the dining-room 
himself, in which case he would have rushed 
to the front door and given the alarm. 

^^Say," said he, '^ii you weren't armed I'd 
fi' with you — fight with you." Henry had 
noticed his thickness of speech, and after that 
he talked with the precision of a well-drilled 
foreigner from whom words come correctly but 
not easily. 

^^I believe you, my boy," said the burglar, 
^^and ordinarily it would be an unfair ad- 
vantage, but consider how much risk I run. I 
have to carry a gun in my business, although I 
hate to use it. But just hurry up with that port, 
will you?" 



1 68 Cheer Up 

Again the burglar's hand strayed pocket-ward 
and Henry shuffled heavily into the dining-room 
and returned with a decanter of port and a 
glass. 

Leaning heavily on the table Henry poured 
out the wine, clinking the glass with the decan- 
ter. The heat of the room had also gotten into 
his fingers. 

^^I hope this is good," said the burglar, as 
he lifted the glass to his lips. ^^ Sometimes I 
have to put up with awful stuff in my peregri- 
nations. Say, did you leave the front door 
open? I feel a draught." 

He tossed off the port and then he set down 
the glass quickly and listened. There was a 
noise of a heavy foot on the step outside, and 
then a footfall in the hall. 

^Xhauncey," thought Henry, and wondered 
if he was armed. 

^^A policeman who had seen the open door," 
thought the burglar, and acted accordingly. 



Cheer Up 169 

In a twinkling he had the pistol out again and 
he shoved the suit-case with his foot until it was 
alongside of Henry. Then he placed his own 
derby somewhat rakishly on Henry's head and 
pointed the pistol at his temple once more. 

A step was heard in the hall and a policeman 
entered the room just as the burglar was saying, 
^^Well, next time you try to rob a house you'd 
better go armed. Officer, you're just in time!" 

The burglar played the part of the owner of 
the house to perfection. As to Henry, thanks 
to the liberal dinner he had had and the sudden 
turning of the tables on him, he could do nothing 
but stammer and look the counterfeit present- 
ment of guilt. 

^Xaught red-handed, eh?" said the police- 
man, glancing at the well-filled suit-case. 

^^ Caught in the act. I'd been to the club 
and when I came home I noticed a light, so I 
let myself in softly and found this bungler at 
work. If he'd been armed he'd have had me, 



170 Cheer Up 

for I had to get my pistol out of the table 
drawer, but I guess he's new at the business 
for he just sat down like a log and never lifted 
a hand." 

^^Been at the booze too long, I guess," said 
the policeman sapiently, glancing at the decan- 
ter. ^^Well, come along." 

Henry began to talk, thickly and lamely. 
''Thish fellow lies. He's the burglar — -" 

^^Oh, cut it short. It's easy to tell you're 
new at the graft. Come now, go day-day like 
a nice little man." 

^'I suppose I've got to go along, too," said the 
burglar, buttoning up his overcoat and pulling 
his gloves out of his pocket. 

^^ Yes, sir, it will be necessary for you to lodge 
a complaint against him. It's only a few blocks 
to the station house." 

^^All right, I'll be right along. I want to run 
up-stairs and see if my mother is awake. She 
might be alarmed if she heard talking." 



Cheer Up 171 

By this time Henry's intellectuals were too 
befogged to realize the admirable nerve of the 
burglar in thus mounting the stairs and running 
an unnecessary risk just to make his position 
more secure. 

^^All right," said the policeman. ^^She might 
take it hard if she's a bit nervous. I'll be out- 
side. You keep this house too warm for 
me." 

^'It is warm/' said the burglar, mounting the 
stairs. ^^My mother is an invalid and needs 
a higher temperature than is comfortable for 
me." 

Henry and the policeman stepped out of doors 
together. The latter had a tight grip on Hen- 
ry's arm for he fancied that he was feigning much 
of his intoxication and he wanted to be prepared 
for a sudden attempt to escape. 

Out on the street the pair waited one, two, 
three, four, five minutes. Then the policeman 
said, ^^I guess his mother was awake." 



172 Cheer Up 

The douche of night air had aroused Henry's 
faculties. ^^ Whose mother?" said he. 

^^His nibs inside. I wish he'd hurry up." 

^^I tell you that I live in this house with my 
mother " 

The policeman was one of those men who, 
when they get on the wrong track, refuse to 
recognize it. Fat-bodied and fat-headed, the 
officer saw but one explanation of the occurrence 
inside, and that he had the wrong man never 
occurred to him for a moment in spite of Henry's 
hints. 

^^ Don't. You make me tired. That's the 
way a kid would talk. Do you mean to tell me 
that when I caught you with the stuff at your 
feet and the other feller gettin' the drop on 
yer, that you're the master of the house ? Any 
one could see he is a gent, but you're a lob- 
ster." 

^^Well, why doesn't he come out then? I 
tell you he's escaping." 



Cheer Up 173 

^^Oh, you love to talk. I guess his mother 
has the hysterics and he's soothin' her. But 
we'll go in an' tell him to git a move on. This 
wind cuts like a knife." 

Still holding Henry's arm in a vise-like grip 
the policeman re-entered the house, and the 
latter called up stairs in a hoarse whisper, "I 
say, git a move on, up there." 

A frightened soprano voice called out, "Who's 
that?" 

"It's I, Henry," said Mr. Corbould. 

"Well, you've got more gall than I thought, 
but it won't go," said the policeman. 

"Mother, is anybody up there?" 

"What do you mean?" 

There was considerable agitation in the voice, 
and the next instant the bedroom was flooded 
with light and an elderly woman stepped to the 
door in her nightrobe. She gave a little scream 
when she saw the policeman and stepped hur- 
riedly behind the crack in the door. 



174 Cheer Up 

^^ What's the matter, my son? Are you 
hurt?" said the crack. 

The big poHceman's dull face was a study. 

^^Is this your son?" said he, addressing the 
crack as one addresses a telephone, that is, 
with an unseeing stare in his eyes. 

"Why, of course, it's my Henry," answered 
the crack. "Oh, my boy, what have you been 
doing?" 

What may have been her suspicions will never 
be known, for the next instant the policeman 
released Henry and ran down stairs like a behe- 
moth. Then he darted into the study and the 
fall of his feet shook the house. One glance 
showed him that the suit-case was gone. 

He went into the dining-room. The window 
leading to the little balcony was open. 

The burglar at that moment was stepping 
on the last theater train on the Pennsylvania 
road with a suit-case full of very valuable 
articles. 



cheer Up 175 

He removed his coat and then he placed 
Henry's high hat on the rack and settled com- 
fortably into the seat. 

'^That's where a silker came in handy. I'd 
give five dollars to be on hand when that old 
puddinghead tumbles to the fact that the old 
lady doesn't belong to me." 




STRAP-HANGERS — and I use the term 
with all respect, for a strap-hanger is often a 
man who has given up his seat to a woman — 
strap-hangers look with condescension on sub- 
urbanites as a flock of tame birds of one breed 
and hue. 

Now, to any one who has lived in the suburbs 
such an idea savors of lunacy. As well say that 
all strap-hangers are alike. 

Why, take George Prentice, who moved out 



176 Cheer Up 

to Cranfield, on the D. L. & N. J. road when 
he was a man of family — he's a suburbanite 
and he glories in it, but he is as different from 
Jack Hammond of the same town (sometimes 
referred to as the "gardener'' for obvious 
reasons), as the Erie is different from the 
"Pennsy." 

Joe Chewins, who is a Mason to the last 
degree and often in New York late, says: 

"If you want to see Prentice, take the 11 p. m. 
out of New York. If he isn't on that get off 
at Newark and wait for the 12 o^clock." 

That shows the sort of suburbanite Prentice 
is. He loves dinners and theaters in New York 
— and he thinks that there is no place like 
Cranfield. 

Prentice is connected with a manufacturing 
house in Liberty street and therefore he is an 
early riser. The other day I had occasion to 
take an early train to the city — the 7 107 to be 
exact — and I met him entering the smoker. 



Cheer Up 177 

We sat down together. I started by rubbing 
the sleep out of my eyeHds. Then I yawned 
and said, ^^ Lucky a man doesn't have to make 
this every morning. I'm still dreaming." 

He looked at me a moment and then replied : 

^'It would do you good to have to work for 
a little while instead of sleeping and pushing 
a pen. This is the train of the whole day. I 
always take it. I get up in the cool of the morn- 
ing at six- thirty the year 'round and sit down to 
breakfast at a quarter to seven, and then I 
have a glorious walk of five minutes to the train 
when the air is sweet, and it braces me up for 
all day in the city. 

"No place like the suburbs," he continued, 
"for a man to live and bring up his children. 
Only twenty-eight miles from New York. Easy 
to get to the theaters. I'm apt to stay in town 
to dinner and the wife meets me there (unless it's 
a stag dinner, you know), and then we go to the 
theater and take that 12 o'clock train out. 



1 7 8 Cheer Up 

Sleep on the train and get to bed by half-past 
I at the latest. And you can sleep in the 
suburbs." 

"I should think you'd live in the city," said 
I, busy with some thoughts about him. 

Prentice looked at me as if I had suggested 
something evil. 

"Wha-at? Me live in New York after I've 
tasted the delights of suburban life? Not 
much. Why, I was horn in the city. I know 
all there is to know about New York. I'm 
there all day long, and what a man in business 
needs is change. Why, if they had a good 
theater in Cranfield I wouldn't even stay in 
town for dinner. But Mrs. Prentice and I 
are very fond of an amusing play — none of 
these problem affairs, you understand, but 
something with plenty of laugh to it — and so 
we go to the theater at least twice a week. 
And then I belong to a lodge and a club and 
that takes up some of my evenings, so you see 



cheer Up 179 

I get all the city I need, and it's absolutely 
necessary, for the sake of my health, to live 
in the suburbs where I'll get fresh air and a 
complete change every night." 

^^Then I suppose you get out early Saturday 
and work in your garden," said I, fully aware 
that I was talking to an enthusiastic suburb- 
anite. 

He looked at me pityingly this time. 

^^I've been a suburbanite for five years. 
Passed the garden stage in twelve months. 
Those who are fond of digging may do it, but 
as long as I pass Washington Market every 
day there's no need for me to sweat over a 
lettuce-bed or to spend time and money on such 
indigestible things as radishes." 

^^Well, then, you play tennis Saturday after- 
noons?" 

'^No, I don't play tennis either. No apo- 
plexy for me. I belong to a sane family and 
I take my pleasures sanely. I generally have 



I 80 Cheer Up 

the children meet me on Saturday at lunch time 
downtown and I blow them off to a lunch and 
then we go to the matinee. I want them to get 
as much fun out of the theater as Mrs. Prentice 
and I have. We go home' to a late dinner, and 
after dinner Cholton generally comes in and 
we play cards until it's bedtime." 

I thought for a minute. So far he had ac- 
counted for his week-days in the suburbs — but 
there was Sunday. 

^^How about Sunday? Walks and talks 
about nature?" 

^^Now don't!" said he, making a grimace. 
^*Do you suppose we are the sort of people 
who take those nature books and botanize and 
snap birds on the wing and press butterflies 
in albums? No, sir! Sunday I take the family 
in to dine with my father and mother. They 
live near Central Park, and the children look 
forward to dinner with the old folks and a 
romp in the park afterward. Central Park is 



Cheer Up 1 8 1 

the greatest breathing-spot in the world and my 
children dote on it, just as I did when I was 
a boy and used to walk up there from Greenwich 
Village. That was when there were goats up 
there and the comic papers were made up of 
jokes about them." 

He was silent for a minute and the train 
passed a lovely piece of woodland on its way to 
the dirty city. Then he said: 

"I tell you I love my little house out in Cran- 
field, and I dread the time when the children 
get to the age that will make the city necessary 
for them." 




IT was a little old-fashioned drug-store in a 
side street in Greenwich village. The small 
soda-fountain would have been out of date 
twenty years ago, and the yellowing shelves 



1 8 2 Gheer Up 

bore bottles and vials and dingy patent medi- 
cines that somehow reminded one of the days 
just after the Civil War. The low-ceiled place 
was dimly lighted by ill-smelling kerosene 
lamps, and the directory needed its chain to 
keep it from falling to pieces. 

Behind the prescription counter, one evening, 
stood the druggist proprietor, a man not far into 
middle age, yet wearing side whiskers that 
seemed indicative of his lack of progressive- 
ness. He was making up a prescription and 
revolving in his mind ways and means to bring 
about a return of the custom that had been 
steadily falling off ever since the smart young 
druggist had opened a brilliantly lighted store 
on the corner below. 

The front door opened, and a thick-set, 
smooth-shaven, red-cheeked, humorous-looking 
man entered, with a waddling step caused by 
the undue stoutness of his two legs. 

^^ Hello, what's happened?" said he, as soon 



Cheer Up 183 

as he came in. ^^Why, it smells like a violet 
ranch. Say, I need some of that perfume right 
now." 

Talking quickly and loudly as was his wont, 
as he approached the prescription desk, although 
he saw nothing but the shiny top of the drug- 
gist's bald head, he sniffed and snuffed, and at 
last stepped around behind the counter in a 
familiar way and said, as he knocked his wind- 
pipe with the edge of his pudgy hand, ''Frog 
in the throat. Need some eucalyptus tablets. 
Say, but it is sweet in here. What's been 
upset?" 

The druggist went on preparing his prescrip- 
tion. He compressed his thin lips to show that 
he did not care to speak, and the jolly little 
man continued, ''Oh, mustn't talk to the man 
at the wheel. All right, my son. Might give 
laudanum in place of rhubarb. That's what 
happened to me when I was a kid. Stomach 
upset. Father great believer in red mixture. 



I 84 Cheer Up 

Had a big bottle of it in closet. Also had a 
bottle of laudanum. I loved red mixture 
almost as much as candy, and when he held 
the spoon out to me I shut my eyes and swal- 
lowed quickly. But I didn't smack my lips. 
I said, ^That's nasty.' Father said, ^What? 
Thought you liked it.' Took bottle to light, 
read ^Laudanum' on the bottle, snatched me up 
under his arm, and ran two blocks to the nearest 
drug-store. They gave me things there that 
caused a regular Russian uprising, but my life 
was saved and has continued to this day. But 
my father was the most demoralized parent 
you ever saw until Little Willy was out of 
danger." 

The apothecary had not heard a word, but 
he had finished putting up the prescription and 
he now said, '^What is it you wish, sir?" 

*^Some eucalyptus tablets. Thought I men- 
tioned it. I also want to know why this place 
smells like a bower of violets?" 



Cheer Up 185 

The druggist gave a little dry cough, smiled 
faintly, and said, ^^I happened to break a bottle 
of my violet perfume. Does smell good, doesn't 
it?" 

^^ Smell good! Why, there's a fortune in that 
smell, man. Early days of courtship, only girl 
I ever loved, and all that sort of thing. Are 
you advertising it much and is it selling well?" 

"I don't have time to advertise," said the 
druggist, as he opened a drawer and pulled out 
a package of eucalyptus tablets. '^And I 
wouldn't know how. There are so many peo- 
ple advertising nowadays that small advertising 
is a drop in the bucket and is as unnoticed 
as a drop in a bucket." 

^^ That's gospel," said the fat man. ''But 
why advertise in a small way? Why not do 
something to attract attention? Now, look 
here. I'm a normal man. Perhaps a little 
more wide-awake than some, but still pretty 
much the man in the street that we hear so much 



1 86 Cheer Up 

about these days. Now, what happened when 
I came in here and was greeted by that fragrant 
salutation? That's what it was, a fragrant sal- 
utation. WTiy, I felt curious to know all about 
the thing. I want a bottle right off, but I also 
want you to advertise it so that other people 
will feel as I did. It knocks the Fifth Avenue 
preparations all hollow." 

'^I know it's a good thing," said the druggist 
quietly. ^^It used to be used a good deal by 
the old substantial families in the neighborhood. 
My father put it up before me. But why should 
you be interested in it? What is there in it for 
you?" 

The stout little man squared his shoulders 
and stepped back a pace as he said, '^Why, I'm 
only the man who crammed Breakfastbran down 
the unwilling throats of a credulous public. 
That stuff was a drug on the market. Done up 
in unattractive packages and selling about one 
a week. I made them put it up in packages 



Cheer Up 187 

that gave you an appetite at once, and I made 
them spend thousands in hammering away on 
that famous catch phrase that covered every 
chimney on the East and West sides for upward 
of a year, and to-day the proprietor of Break- 
fastbran is an art connoisseur and needs a man 
to dress him and can't enjoy music unless he's 
in a box, and I did it. Now, if you want to have 
me work this thing up for you, I'll do it, and 
we'll make old New York the sweetest place on 
earth." 

Just then the door opened and a young 
woman entered and asked for a glass of ice- 
cream soda. 

"I don't have ice-cream," said the druggist, 
approaching her, ^^I can give you plain vanilla 
cream." 

^^ Never mind," said the woman, and walked 
out. 

^'Oh, I see," said the stout man, as the door 
closed after her. ^^ You're in business for your 



1 88 Cheer Up 

health. You don't care to keep what the pubhc 
wants. You're like the man up in Maine who 
was asked if he had somebody's or other's laun- 
dry soap. ^I did keep it,' said he, 'but there 
was so many calls for the pesky thing that it got 
to be a nuisance orderin' it, an' I gave up hand- 
lin' it!'" 

"No," said the druggist, good-humoredly, 
"I'm not as bad as that. I'd like to build up a 
better business, but I get discouraged. I'm off 
the line of travel." 

"Then create a new line of travel by carrying 
a line of goods that will cause travel in your 
direction." 

The druggist shook his head dubiously. 

The door opened, and the young woman who 
had wanted ice-cream soda came in again and 
said, "How much is your violet perfume a 
bottle?" 

"See there?" ejaculated the stout man. 

The druggist told her the price, and she 



Cheer Up i 89 

bought a bottle, which he wrapped up neatly 
in the way known of old-fashioned druggists, 
and she went out with her purchase. 

The door was no sooner closed upon her than 
the stout man said, ^^She bought that because 
you advertised it by breaking that bottle. Now, 
see here. I'm something of a plunger and I'm 
willing to put five thousand dollars into the 
exploiting of your violet perfume if you'll give 
me a royalty of twenty per cent, on its sale." 

"That seems fair," said the druggist, pulling 
at his whiskers thoughtfully. "But it also 
seems mad. How can you get your money 
back? There aren't many people that call for 
violet perfume." 

"Oh, it's a cinch. You can begin to get your 
picture-gallery ready, pick out your man to dress 
you, and give the dimensions of the box you 
want at the opera." 



I go Cheer Up 

IT was a balmy Saturday afternoon in early 
spring. Fifth Avenue and Broadway were 
thronged by the usual crowd, made up of Brook- 
lynites, suburbanites, Harlemites and travel- 
ers, with here and there a New Yorker born and 
bred. They moved north and south, some of 
them clad in the habiliments of fashion, but 
more clothed in the coverings of necessity. 

At the junction of Fifth Avenue and Broad- 
way and Twenty-third Street, many stopped to 
look at the huge bottle of perfumery on wheels 
that was slowly coming up the Avenue. 

The bottle was ten feet high, and was made of 
violet-colored glass bearing a white label setting 
forth the fact that it contained ^^ Hood's Wood 
Violet." The bottle was set on four violet- 
colored wheels, and the driver was clothed like 
a page in a suit of violet velvet, and walked 
alongside of the bottle driving four Shetland 
ponies in violet-hued harness and bearing violet 
aigrettes on their heads. 



cheer Up 191 

The boy driver was pretty, the ponies were 
^^cute/' the bottle was of graceful shape, and 
more than one person made the original remark, 
''What won't they do next?" 

What they did do next was of an astonishing 
nature. 

Just who did it or how it was done was ap- 
parent to few, and they did not tell the police- 
man; but just as the bottle had cleared the 
tracks of the cross-town lines and had entered 
upon the plaza, a loud crash was heard, the 
bottle disappeared in a wreckage of glass, and 
the balmy air was made more balmy by the 
penetrative odor of ''Hood's Wood Violet," 
which watered the streets for the space of the 
third of a block. 

Little boys and boys not so little lost no time 
in dipping handkerchiefs into the fragrant flood ; 
one small street urchin deliberately lay down on 
his back in the perfume and rose sweeter than 
he had ever been in his nine years; horses 



192 cheer Up 

stepped through it and bore a fragrance as of a 
bed of violets far up the Avenue. 

The usual crowd collected and the usual in- 
quiries were made, but no one seemed to know 
who had thrown the Belgian paving-stone which 
lay in the crush of glass upon the asphalt pave- 
ment. The ponies had started to run, but had 
been stopped almost instantly by their little 
driver, who seemed exceedingly unconcerned 
except that the breaking of so much glass 
naturally pleased him. 

For rods around people sniffed the air de- 
lightedly. Not a few felt a longing to get out 
into the country, but more felt that they wouldn't 
mind owning a little perfume like that themselves. 

It could not have been more than two min- 
utes after the accident when twenty little pages 
clad in violet arrived on the scene and began to 
distribute handbills which were gotten up to 
resemble miniature ^^ extras." The handbills 
read: 



Cheer Up 193 

**Full account of the cause of the fragrance in this 
part of the city. 

*'The bottle that was wrecked at Madison Square 
was filled with 'Hood's Wood Violet.' If you like 
the perfume, why not buy a fifty-cent bottle at Hood's 
Drugstore, 6 Grove Street? Or ask your druggist 
for it. 

"'Hood's Wood Violet' is the most delicate perfume 
on the market. Every one is speaking about it." 

And every one was. It was singular how 
strong and how penetrating the deHcate essence 
was. Ladies whose skirts trailed through it 
bore the sylvan sweetness on their clothes for 
days. Not a train out of town that afternoon 
but carried some involuntarily beperfumed man 
or woman with a story of the sweet disaster. 

Before nightfall of that day the little apoth- 
ecary had more calls from customers than he 
had received in a week. 

The incident had been enough of a news item 
to get into the papers, but, while some of the 
editors refrained from mentioning the name of 
the perfumer, it was noticed that others spelled 



194 Cheer Up 

his name in full. And, curiously enough, those 
of the latter class had column advertisments 
made up of a picture of a bottle of the perfume, 
and underneath it the inscription, ^^ ^Hood's 
Wood Violet.' The most talked-of perfume in 
New York. Carry the news to your neighbor 
and buy a bottle for your sweetheart." 

The little druggist made so much before a 
month was up that he thought he had better 
stop advertising, as every one must know about 
the perfume. 

^'My dear fellow," said the advertising man, 
who had that day deposited five hundred dollars 
in the bank as his share of the profits of the first 
month, ^^advertising should never stop. Why, 
if the papers were to stop advertising Teddy 
himself, the people would forget him. And I 
voted for him and like him too. But it's adver- 
tising that keeps him alive. The secret of suc- 
cess is advertising, and then advertising again 
and then never stopping advertising. 



Cheer Up 195 

"Now, if you'll get a soda-water fountain 
that was made day after to-morrow and have 
ice-cream soda, whether you like it yourself or 
not, and if you will put in electric lights and 
make this place blaze at night, and advertise 
your old perfume every day in every paper, you 
and I will get capitalist's cramp from cutting 
coupons." 

"I guess you're right," said the little druggist. 

"Of course I'm right. And do you mind my 
being personal?" 

"I can stand anything from you, for you have 
certainly brought me prosperity." 

"Well, then, remove those Dundrearies and 
come into this year of our Lord 1906. Whiskers 
were all right in the nineteenth century, but this 
is the twentieth." 

And the whiskers fell like leaves in the forest of 
Vallombrosa that very day, and their fall took 
twenty years off the age of the drug-store. 



196 Cheer Up 

I NOTICED in the paper the other day the 
death of Peter Crawford, of the firm of Craw- 
ford & Co., iron merchants, of John Street; 
and among the news items of a later issue I read 
that Peter Crawford had left all of his money to 
a rich nephew to do as he pleased with it, and 
that the nephew intended to divide it among 
various deserving charities. 

Twenty years ago I had exceptional oppor- 
tunities for observing Peter Crawford, as for a 
long time Frank Aldrich, the man in whose 
employ I worked, had desk room in the house 
of Crawford & Co.. 

Peter was as hard as the iron he sold. Any 
one in John Street would have told you that. 
He would have told you so himself. He used 
to eat his luncheon at Farrish's chop-house and 
always sat by himself in the corner with his 
back to the rest of the customers. And Mr. 
Farrish's head barkeeper would point him out 



Cheer Up 197 

to those who came in, and go through a panto- 
mimic action expressive of head-punching. It 
would have edified the old man if he could have 
known this, for he gloried in his hardness and 
was pleased at his unpopularity. Not but that 
he had friends, but they were, in the main, men 
in other lines of trade. 

When I went to work for Frank Aldrich I 
thought Peter Crawford the harshest and the 
most unpleasant man I had ever seen. The 
very morning I began work he stopped at my 
desk and asked me my name in a rasping, high- 
pitched voice that went with his dried-leaf com- 
plexion and drum-head skin. 

^^Alden Adams, sir," said I. 

^'Well, I suppose you'll fritter away Mr. 
Aldrich's time. They all do. How much do 
you get?" 

*'Two dollars a week." 

^'Well, it's more than any boy's worth. I 
worked for a year just to learn the business, and 



198 Cheer Up 

glad of a chance. To-day boys are paid for do- 
ing nothing, and they don't learn anything." 

^^Well, I'm glad I don't have to work for 
you/' said I to myself as he passed on. 

That afternoon or the next, as I sat at my 
desk addressing envelopes, a pale-looking woman 
came down the aisle and asked me where Mr. 
Crawford's office was. I told her and she 
went on. 

^^Well, what do you want?" said Crawford's 
rasping, querulous voice. 

^'I'm Mrs. Seymour. My husband used to 
work for you." 

^^What, John Seymour? Wasn't worth his 
salt. I discharged him." 

"Yes, sir, but he's just been run over by a 
horse car and he'll be unable to work for several 
weeks " 

"Never was able to work." 
i Oh, how my blood boiled at his unfeeling 
remarks. 



Cheer Up 199 

^'Yes, sir/' said the woman; ^^but I thought 
that maybe you could find something for me to 
do so as to make a Httle money " 

^^ Never knew a woman yet who could do 
anything worth paying for. I wonder why you 
came here to pester me." 

^'Well, sir, John told me you were not " 

^^Not sympathetic. Well, he told you right. 
If John had been minding his business he 
wouldn't have been run over. I can't do any- 
thing for you, but if you want you can write to 
my partner. Here's his address. I believe he 
saw some good in John when he was here, but I 
didn't. If he's fool enough to help you, all 
right. Now, do go along, and don't bother me." 

The woman came away crying, and I remem- 
ber wishing I had been paid so that I might show 
her that every one was not as hard as Peter 
Crawford, but all I had was a cent for my fer- 
riage — I lived in Brooklyn — and I could do 
nothing. 



2 00 Cheer Up 

Later in the week I was talking about Craw- 
ford's hardness to Jimmy Egan, the shipping 
clerk, and he said: 

^^I guess his partner must have J&xed John up 
all right, for Mrs. Seymour's got a job at dress- 
making, and when I went to see John at the 
hospital he'd a bunch of flowers from Schutt." 

The shipping clerk's eyes twinkled as he said 
this, but though I noticed the twinkle I couldn't 
see the occasion for it, and ascribed it to ner- 
vousness. Twitching noses and lips and twink- 
ling eyes are sometimes forms of St. Vitus' 
dance. 

Mr. Crawford's partner, G. W. Schutt, never 
came to the ofiice. I was on the premises for 
six months and I never saw him, but I knew 
that the firm had western connections, and I 
understood that he represented the house at 
Pittsburg. 

Christmas came along a month or so after I 
began to work for Aldrich, and the day before 



Cheer Up 201 

that holiday Crawford said to the cashier in a 
voice that pierced the remotest part of the store : 

^^I understand that old man Doane is giving 
away turkeys to his clerks. Doane is a blamed 
fool. The men won't work a bit better for him 
because of his doing it. When I was a boy I had 
to work for all I got, and there was no such thing 
as Christmas in the town where I came from, 
up in Maine. If I pay a man what he's worth, 
anything over that is charity and tends to pau- 
perize him." 

His exit from the store was the cue for a chorus 
of groans, in which I joined with heartiness on 
general principles. Of course, I had nothing to 
gain either way. Mr. Aldrich had already given 
me a crisp two-dollar bill for my Christmas, so 
I was happy, but I did feel sorry for Crawford's 
men, and I told his new office-boy that he was 
the meanest man on John Street. 

^^ Meanest man in the iron business," said he. 

About five o'clock there came a telegram from 



2 02 Cheer Up 



Pittsburg signed ^^G. W. Schutt," and addressed 
to the cashier. He read it and then came to the 
door of the counting-room and said : 

"Hurrah, boys; it's a good thing there's a 
partner to this concern. Mr. Schutt tells me to 
give you all one per cent, of your salaries as a 
Christmas present." 

I looked over at the shipping clerk at that 
moment, and again his eyes were twinkling; 
but for me I felt a little downhearted. I was 
sorry I did not belong to the house of Crawford 
& Co. The telegram had called for gold, and, 
strange to say, the cashier had a good supply of 
it. He called all the office staff in, and they 
came back, some with eagles, some with half- 
eagles, and two with double eagles. Several 
stopped at my desk and showed me their bright 
coins, and my heart felt like lead. 

In a few minutes the cashier came out and 
said: "Alden, Mr. Aldrich says I may send you 
around to King & Cumberland's on an errand, 



Cheer Up 203 

as Tom is busy, and Mr. Crawford's partner 
wanted me to give you this for your Christmas." 

He handed me a gold dollar, the first I had 
ever seen. I thanked him and went on that 
errand with my feet very light indeed. How in 
the world had Mr. Schutt ever heard of me? 
How different a man from that old curmudgeon, 
Crawford ! 

When I came back I stopped at the shipping 
clerk's desk. He was a sympathetic young 
Irishman and the friendliest man in the place, 
and I wanted to tell him of my good fortune. 

^' Isn't Mr. Schutt a Jim Dandy?" 

^'Yes," said he, and again the eyes twinkled. 
*^It's a wonder he'd never come here to be 
thanked. Did y'ever see his photograph?" 

/^No," said I. 

"Neither did I, but I think he's the living 
image of Mr. Crawford." 

Now, this struck me at the time and often 
after as being inconsequent and entirely illogical. 



2 04 Cheer Up 

but I never remembered to ask him what he 
meant. 

Among the office force there was a black- 
haired, dreamy-eyed boy from some place on 
Cape Cod. We called him the artist and used 
to make fun of him because he was always see- 
ing beauty in things that looked desperately 
commonplace to us. 

He was a faithful fellow, but he always spent 
his noon hours drawing, and at last Mr. Pulsifer, 
the pump man next door, who was something of 
an art-lover, told him that he ought to study 
abroad. 

"You'll never make your mark in the iron 
business, and you may do a good deal as an 
artist. You go and tell Mr. Crawford how 
it is, or else get your mother to go." 

Now, Story — ^his name was Waldo Story — 
was, as I have said, a dreamy sort of chap, and 
it had never occurred to him that Crawford was 
a hard man, so what did he do but go home and 



Cheer Up 205 

tell his mother what Pulsifer had said, and the 
next day she came down to speak to the old man. 

He sat with his hat on all through the inter- 
view. I know, for I saw him through the open 
door. You could not say that Peter Craw- 
ford's manners were irreproachable. 

^^ Well, what is it? Whose leg is broken now? 
When did he work for me?" 

There was silence for a moment, and then 
Mrs. Story said: 

^^I don't understand you, sir. I'm Waldo's 
mother." 

^^And who in thunder is Waldo?" 

'^Why, Waldo is your clerk," said she as 
proudly as if she had said he was the redoubt- 
able partner himself. 

'^ Oh, the boy in a dream all the while. Well, 
what did he fall through? How long will he be 
laid up? Why didn't he use his eyes?" 

'^ Waldo hasn't had anything happen to him, 
but he wants to go to Paris to study art." 



2o6 Cheer Up 

Mrs. Stoty plumped the words out more 
quickly than she had intended, I dare say, and 
they plainly staggered Mr. Cra^^ord. 

"Oh, he does, does he?" said he, raising his 
already high voice, as he always did when he 
was losing his temper. 

"Yes, sir." 

"Mrs. Waldo, or whatever your name is, do 
you suppose that I went into the iron business 
so that I could keep people in hospitals, and art 
schools, and other places, and do my own work 
myself? x^ren't there enough artists and other 
incapables without deliberately going to work 
to make one? \Miat earthly good is an artist? 
/ never bought a picture in my life. Iron's 
some use. I can see a profit in iron, but do you 
suppose there's any profit in pictures? A man 
buys a picture and his money's gone, and all he 
has is a lot of paint smeared on a board. That's 
all a picture is. Now, if Waldo stays here he 
may become a respectable member of society. 



Cheer Up 207 

an iron merchant, but if he becomes an artist 
he'll go to the devil and be an object of charity 
all his days. And you want me to help him on 
the road to perdition?" 

He paused, and Mrs. Story said with dignity, 
^'Mr. Crawford, I had no idea I should hear 
anything like this or I should not have come. 
I thought that if you cared for pictures you 
might help him along and he'd repay you when 
he got a name. He is said to have great talent." 

^^Well, you've come to the wrong shop. If 
my partner was here he might do something, for 
Waldo is a good boy, but I have no use for 
artists. They are fifth-wheels, incumbrances, 
utter no-goods. Here, this is Mr. Schutt's ad- 
dress. If you want to, write to him. He may 
do something. Out in Pittsburg they go in for 
art, but I'm dead against the whole theory of 
paying a man for fooling away precious time." 

He turned to his desk and she came out, 
crumpling up the paper in her hand and her 



2o8 Cheer Up 

eyes full of tears. As she passed my desk I 
rose to go out to the shipping clerk, and I said 
to her, '^ You'd better write to Mr. Schutt. 
He'll help Waldo." 

She evidently took my advice, for about a 
fortnight later Waldo came to the store with the 
happiest look I had ever seen on his melancholy 
face. 

^^Mr. Schutt is a brick," said he, and then he 
told us that Mr. Schutt had seen his work and 
he had showed it to some Pittsburg people con- 
nected with the art gallery there, and that he was 
to go to Paris to study art, and that he was to 
give Mr. Schutt an option on any pictures he 
might paint during the next ten years. 

'^I'm glad to leave Crawford. My mother 
says he was almost insulting." 

Although I have changed his name, those 
who follow art matters will have no difficulty in 
recognizing Waldo Story. He certainly did 
have rare talent, and he applied himself dili- 



Cheer Up 209 

gently and exhibited in the salon ten years or 
more ago, and afterward came to New York 
to Hve, but he never could overcome his 
aversion to the man who might have helped him 
but who didn't. 

Strange to say he never saw Mr. Schutt, all 
matters being arranged by correspondence, but 
that Pittsburg patron of the fine arts bought 
five or six of his pictures. 

Crawford's cashier told me two or three years 
ago that once when he went up to the house of 
his employer on business he noticed three of 
Waldo's pictures on the walls, and they were 
the only decent pictures the old man had. 

I wish I knew what had become of Egan, the 
shipping clerk. I think if I were to tell him how 
Crawford, dying, had left all his money to a rich 
nephew, with the injunction that he do as he 
pleased with it, and that the nephew had divided 
it among various deserving charities, his eyes 
would have twinkled as of old, and he would 



2 lo Cheer Up 

have said something about that invisible Pitts- 
burg partner. 

Surly, humorous, irascible, kind-hearted old 
Peter Crawford. 




WHO of us has not knowTi that type of man 
which is never content to like that best 
which by a general consensus of opinion is so 
labeled, but must ever seek out the unknown, 
and place it on a pedestal that o'ertops all 
others as the Sphinx o'ertops a plaster cast of it? 
Now I love that spirit of enthusiasm and open- 
mindedness that is willing to believe that there 
are giants in these days. Giants there have 
always been and giants there will always be, but 
the type of man of which I write never by any 
chance picks out the one in whom you yourself 
have confidence; he never picks out a fellow 



Cheer Up 211 

American either — it is almost always a Rus- 
sian, or a Dane, or a Pole, of whom you have 
never heard, and so great are his powers of 
dogmatic utterance, and so magnetic his person- 
ality, that he makes you believe his belief — 
while you are with him. 

Drop into his rooms some sunny afternoon, 
feeling that you are progressive and ever young 
in your own enthusiasms, and in five minutes' 
time he will cover you with cobwebs, and make 
you feel that you are a superannuated moss- 
back. 

By way of opening the conversation make 
some chance reference to Shakespeare and the 
delight that you have lately had from seeing 
Twelfth Night adequately played. 

His lip will curl and he will say: 

^^My dear fellow, Shakespeare is all very well 
for the ordinary mind; indeed, I'll go so far as 
to say that some very cultivated people find 
much to admire in him, but when I want to 



2 12 Cheer Up 

hear the last word in drama I go to the unpub- 
Kshed works of Ivan Stepnovitch. They are 
dramas that will not act and were not meant to 
act, and that, after all, is the highest form of 
dramatic art. I want meat, not milk for 
babes." 

Already you are beginning to feel that 
Shakespeare is pretty soppy mental pabulum, 
and you wonder that you have never heard of 
Stepnovitch. But I think that if our friend 
felt that his opinion had already been shared by 
others he would cease to hold it himself. 

^^ Drama that will act," he continues, ^4s 
easy. Any one can write it. Clyde Fitch gives 
us plays that will act, but I do not place him 
even alongside Shakespeare. The real master, 
however, is the man who writes us plays that 
were never intended to be acted, and that could 
not be acted, and yet seem so real as we read 
them that we can imagine the greatest actors in 
the world playing the various parts. That's 



Cheer Up 213 

what happens when I read Stepnovitch, a Rus- 
sian who is as much greater than Tolstoy as 
Tolstoy is greater than Ho wells." 

It is the same in the arts. You say some- 
thing about the perpetual strength, the eternal 
beauty revealed in the statues of Michael 
Angelo, and our friend shakes his head, elevates 
his eyebrows, sighs prodigiously, and says: 

'^My dear man, we of the future are away 
past Michelangelo [note his form of the name]. 
Michelangelo was possessed of a certain power 
and at his best there is a charm in his work that 
still lingers, and I admit that his influence in the 
art world has been wholly good, but we of to-day 
need not look to Michelangelo when we can 
revel in the work of that godlike sculptor, 
Edouard Petrovitski." 

You tell him that you never heard of Petro- 
vitski, and he looks at you with holy compassion 
for a moment, and then he says : 

^^My dear fellow, why do you try to give your 



2 14 Cheer Up 

opinion of Michelangelo when you admit that 
you have never even heard of Petrovitski?" 

^^Is he alive to-day?" you ask. 

"No. He died forty years ago in Warsaw, 
and all of his works were destroyed by the Rus- 
sian government because they were too revolu- 
tionary; but luckily for posterity photographs 
were taken of them, very poor ones, but still 
sufficient to place Petrovitski on a pinnacle that 
makes the height of poor Michelangelo seem 
like a depression." 

You know that when you get out into the light 
of day your old ideas will reassert themselves, 
and you will once more love Michael Angelo's 
work, but just now you feel that he is not much 
better than the sculptor who did the atrocious 
statue of "Sunset" Cox that has been erected 
in a scarecrow position in Astor Place. 

Your friend, with real eloquence, shows you 
how "Michelangelo" has no chance to run in 
the same class with this Titanic Pole, and you 



Cheer Up 215 

find yourself sneering at the veneer of culture 
that could find so much to praise in the Italian 
sculptor. 

Your friend is an all-round man. It is not 
alone in literature and sculpture that he is fully 
awake, and taking special notice; in the field of 
landscape art he is not only abreast of the 
times, but several decades ahead of them. 

Perhaps you yourself feel that in art matters 
you are very much alive and open to the im- 
pressions of to-day, and so you say to him with 
all the confidence of a man who expects to be 
supported in his opinion, that, much as this 
country has been decried by Europeans as a 
dollar-loving land, we are yet advancing to the 
front in at least one of the arts, and that the best 
exponents of landscape art to-day are Americans 
— that France already knows this, and that 
America is beginning to realize it. 

^^I'm sorry I can't agree with you," says he, 
and once more the lip curls gracefully (he must 



2i6 Cheer Up 

put it up in curl papers). "From the time of 
Lorraine and Poussin, up through the English 
and French schools to the modern American, 
there has never been a school that really pro- 
duced an art creation in landscape fit to cause 
enthusiasm in a really thinking man, a man who 
appreciates his Stepnovitch in literature, and 
his Petrovitski in sculpture. The only super- 
latively imaginative and poetic, and yet abso- 
lutely truthful landscapes that have ever been 
painted are those of Eric Finsen." 

You gasp and ask him who Eric Finsen may 
be. 

Again that holy smile that pardons all your 
lack of knowledge of the really necessary, and 
then he tells you that Eric Finsen is a Finnish 
fisherman, or perhaps a Danish carpenter, who 
only paints on Sundays, and that his work is 
known only to an inner circle of appreciative 
souls, but that by it Corot and Turner and Mil- 
let and Constable and Israels and Inness and 



Cheer Up 217 



Wyant and Rousseau become mere Christmas- 
card makers. 

Once more — in his presence — you see how 
fatuous you have been really to like anything in 
American art, or the school of 1830, or the 
Englishmen; and you feel, without having seen 
anything of Finsen's work, that he alone of all 
painters has struck the right note, and that 
artists would better try some other profession 
in the future, as Finsen has already distanced 
them. 

And speaking of true notes, let us sound our 
friend on composers — for he is nothing if not 
musical, and ten years ago he felt so mortally 
tired of orchestral music, as utterly inadequate 
to express the thoughts that arose in him, that 
he now never attends a concert of any sort, 
preferring to read the music scores in his own 
room and thus getting an absolutely perfect 
representation of the master-work of master- 
minds. 



2 1 8 Cheer Up 

You ask him whether in naming the three 
great composers of all time he would include 
Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner, or whether he 
would leave out Bach and put in Richard 
Strauss (Strauss is really a sop to him). 

^^Oh, how puerile a selection! Why mention 
any of those three? Bach I might allow to re- 
main for historical reasons, but Beethoven and 
Wagner I left behind me ages ago, and Richard 
Strauss — the main fault that I find with 
Richard Strauss is that he is so old-fashioned, 
so hopelessly melodic and conventional. Till 
Eulenspiegel is a tune to be whistled by kinder- 
gartners. 

^^No, if you want the music of the future, the 
real thing, the last word for all time in music, 
get the scores — if you can, they are not pub- 
lished in this country — of Johan Rubernek 
of Prague, a young man not yet twenty-five, 
but already past-master of the orchestra of the 
future. He has invented six instruments for the 



Cheer Up 219 

purpose of making sounds that hitherto never ex- 
isted, and when I read his scores all else in music 
seems banality. Rubernek is the finis in music." 

It is time to reel out, and you do so, and find 
the old-fashioned sun still shining, and a piano 
organ is playing a ^^ crudity" from Aida^ and 
you rejoice in it. You go up to the park, and 
look at St. Gauden's statue of Sherman, and you 
actually like it, and feel that in spite of the pho- 
tographs of Petrovitski's statues St. Gaudens is 
among the immortals. Then you go to the 
Metropolitan Museum and you dare to drink 
in the everlasting beauty of one of Inness's 
dreams of God's country, and in the evening 
you venture to like a performance of one of 
Shakespeare's ^^ attempts" at the drama, and 
you thank God that you never before heard of 
Stepnovitch, Petrovitski, Finsen, or Rubernek. 

But, nevertheless, you have a sneaking feeling 
that your friend represents the creme de la creme 
of culture. Dogmatism, great is thy power! 



2 20 Cheer Up 

JOEL BEECHER was the kindest-hearted, 
hardest-tongued man in Ridgeville. A pair 
of eyes that burned like fire one minute and 
twinkled like stars the next, he would kick a 
man off his front step and then invite him in to 
have a drink of hard cider and forget it. Ridge- 
ville is perched up among the hills of North- 
western Connecticut, and for a long time her 
rough and steep roads kept automobiles away 
eflFectually, and the farmers stood in no fear of 
runaway accidents from meeting the new- 
fangled wagons. 

When the first automobile came pufiing up 
mountainous Chestnut Hill and caused Joel 
Beecher's horse to run into Joel Beecher's 
fence, to the great demoralization of fence, 
buggy, and horse, Joel Beecher vowed ven- 
geance on the whole tribe of autos, electric, 
gasolene, and steam. 

''By thunder and Mars!" said he. ''What 



Cheer Up 221 

do these youngsters take us for? Automobiles 
are all right in the city where there ain't any 
nervous farm horses, but when they take to 
climbin' hills that have bothered us and our 
horses for generations, and go puflSn' and 
snortin' by like a gang of devils, it's time for 
'em to be stopped." 

'^But, Joel," said his next-door neighbor, a 
summer resident who contemplated buying an 
automobile, ^^ they've come to stay. You can't 
stop them, any more than you can stop steam 
cars or trolleys." 

"Well, by ginger and senna! I'd like to see 
'em speed by here after I've warned 'em as 
selectman that they can't! Near's I can make 
out this is America, and as near as I can make 
out America was settled in the country first of 
all. Cities were an after-consideration. Peo- 
ple in the country have rights that city men are 
bound to respect, and when these nothin'-but- 
play people come puffin' and snortin' up on 



2 22 Cheer Up 

these eternal hills at a rate to frighten a loco- 
motive, they've got to consider that Joel Beecher 
ain't a-go'n' to have it!" 

Just what Joel's rights were need not appear. 
It was not many days before he announced that 
the autoist who had frightened his horse had 
bought him a new buggy, and the day after that 
a large sign was placed by him at the foot of 
Chestnut Hill: 

All automo-bilers [the division was his own] are hereby 
forbidden to ride through Ridge Street at a pace faster 
than five miles an hour. Ridge Street is at the top of this 
hill. 

By order of Joel Beecher, Selectman. 

Chestnut Hill was too steep to be tempting to 
the average autoist, and most of those who read 
the sign passed by on the other side. 

But a certain man from New York, owner of 
a strong car and an equally strong will, saw the 
sign, and, chuckling to his companions, straight- 
way left his mapped-out route and chugged up 



Cheer Up 223 

the hill. It was something of a test even for 
this machine; but he made it, and, once at the 
top, with a toot of derision, he put on all speed 
and raced along Ridge Street, a country road 
some three miles in length, leading by a score 
of typical Connecticut farm-houses, at a forty- 
mile gait. 

Joel was busy in his barn-yard, and he did 
not know what was happening until he heard 
the toot, and then it was too late to do anything. 
But it added fuel to the flame of his anger. His 
language was scarlet in conception, although 
almost entirely made up of home-made oaths. 
^^By the great Godfrey of Goshen!" said he, 
running to the road and shaking his fist at the 
cloud of dust and the penetrating odor, '^I'U 
be entirely hornswoggled if you go through 
again without a punctured tire!" 

If the New York man had had the temerity to 
turn and come back he would have been met by 
Joel armed with a revolver, and at least one of 



2 24 Cheer Up 

his tires would have been reHeved of air. But 
the tourist was content. He had decorated the 
road with an eighth of a mile of pet dog, and he 
and his companions went on their way with 
glad hearts, thinking no more of Joel Beecher 
and Ridge Street. 

That evening at mail-time Joel improvised an 
indignation meeting in the post-ofl&ce. Most of 
the residents of Ridge Street and the parallel 
roads were there, and all of them were serious in 
their determination to put a stop to the speeding 
of automobiles on the venerable highway that 
had been sacred to the ox-team ever since Ridge- 
ville was settled by adventurous Windsor people. 

"Who owns the roads, anyhow?" said Joel. 
"Who pays the taxes up here? — do we or do 
those blamed city dudes? Would we let any of 
our own people play steam engine on this old 
street? Not by a jugful. And we ain't go'n' to 
let those smart Alecs come up here to race their 
bad-smellin' automobiles. I'm go'n' to fasten 



Cheer Up 225 

a piece of tape across the road at 'Bijah Wee- 
don's just as a hint to stop. Our own teams can 
lift it over their heads Hke clothes-Hnes and 
stand the inconvenience for the pubHc good." 

No one objected to this reasonable idea, and 
Joel continued: ^^And I thought 'twould be a 
good idee to have just beyond the tape, say in 
front of my house, a couple of ropes meetin' 
across the road and snapped together by clips. 
Our teamsters can unbuckle 'em and pass on 
and buckle 'em up again; but automobiles will 
be brought to a full stop, and then I'll go out 
and, bein' a justice of the peace, I'll fine 'em if 
they've been go'n' too fast." 

^'Supposin' they ain't got any money?" said 
one. 

^^ That's all them fellers have got. Ain't got 
any brains, or they wouldn't ride in the pesky 
toys." 

Joel's scheme was voted a good one. There 
was not a man on the street, with the exception 



2 26 Cheer Up 

of the summer resident, who had any sympathy 
for automobiKsts. 

Next day the tape was stretched across the 
road, about an eighth of a mile beyond the brow 
of Chestnut Hill, and about fifty rods beyond 
that the ropes were snapped together, and 
proved an effectual barrier for all teams. In- 
deed, there was much grumbling on the part of 
the women who that day drove by on their way 
to the meeting of the sewing society '^at the 
home of Mrs. Israel Palmer." 

But Joel, who had appointed himself in- 
spector, was on hand to open the ^4oll-gate'' for 
them, and he was audacious enough to say to 
pretty Madge Pierson that forty years earlier he 
would have demanded the regulation toll from 
her. 

'^ Forty years ago, I would have lacked twenty 
years of being here. Uncle Joel," laughed she, 
and chirruped to her horse. 

^^ You'll live to see automobiles abolished by 



Cheer Up 227 

law. That's the advantage of havin' been born 
so late in the century." 

At that very minute an automobile, driven 
furiously, was starting up Chestnut Hill. The 
chauffeur did not stop to read the notice, and 
the pretty girl by his side had eyes for nothing 
but the rear of the road. She acted as if she 
expected pursuit. ^^Why do you go this way, 
Harry?" 

^^ Because he'll naturally expect us to take the 
valley road, and when I get to Ridge Street I'll 
go like Sam Hill and we'll get to the Baptist min- 
ister's ahead of your father." 

"If nothing stops us." 

"Nothing will stop us, my darling. This 
machine isn't afraid of any hill in Connecticut." 

"Yes, but we may be arrested for speeding." 

"Nothing but farmers up on the hill, and 
they'll all be at work. An hour from now you 
and I will be Mr. and Mrs. Bacon. Doesn't it 
sound great?" 



2 28 Cheer Up 

^^Yes, dear; only I wish you were going to 
take my name. I think Atherton is prettier 
than Bacon." 

^^So you are; but the longer we live together 
the more I'll look like you, you know." 

Up the hill they went, the light machine re- 
sponding to her levers as if she knew what was 
wanted of her, and longed to leave the pursuing 
parent forever. 

In front of the house upon the hill stood Joel 
talking to his granddaughter. 

^^ What's that, grandpa?" said the little girl, 
her quick ears catching the sound of the ascend- 
ing machine. 

'^ Crows," said the old man, chucking her 
fondly under the chin. 

^^I don't mean that, grandpa. I know crows. 
I mean that thup-thup, thup-thup sound." 

^^Your ears are better than mine," said the 
old man, his eyes catching fire. ^^I do believe 
it's a pesky automobile you hear." 



Cheer Up 229 

^^Do you want it to be one, grandpa?" said 
the girl. ^^I thought you hated them. " 

^'But I want to show 'em the law's got to be 
obeyed. That's what I want! Yes," said he, 
cocking his head to one side. ^^It is one, sure 
enough. Now, you'd better go into the house, 
child, because I may talk some." The old man 
walked nimbly to a place midway between the 
tape and the rope, and awaited the coming of 
his adversary. ^^Yes, it's one of 'em, sure 
enough. Maybe they'll stop — I guess yes, 
when I read the riot act to 'em." 

The machine made the summit of the hill, 
and the chauffeur, changing the gear, pre- 
pared to make a record run along Ridge 
Street. 

'^Oh, what's that tape, Harry?" 

'Xurse it! Some interference," said Bacon. 
"Hello! there's a hayseed." 

The "hayseed," otherwise known as Joel 
Beecher, descendant of a long line of sturdy 



230 Cheer Up 

farmers, advanced into the middle of the road 
and began waving his arms. 

^^We can't stop," said Bacon, and the ma- 
chine sprang ahead, breaking the tape. 

'^I guess you'll just about stop in a minute," 
said Joel, pulling out a revolver and preparing to 
puncture the rear tire if it should be necessary. 

At sight of the revolver the girl screamed; 
but her protector plunged doggedly on toward 
Joel until he saw the stout rope barring the 
road. 

The roadway was wide, and Bacon managed 
to describe a circle and brought the machine to 
a standstill just as Joel fired off his revolver and 
— missed the tire. 

^^Say, old man, we're in a great hurry." 

^* That's why I stopped you," said Joel dryly, 
putting his revolver into his hip pocket. '^ We're 
opposed to hurry on Ridge Street. You've laid 
yourself open to a fine of twenty-five dollars, 
which I want." 



Cheer Up 231 



^^And then may we go on?" asked the girl. 
Her lover was scowling at Joel and wondering 
just how far he had right on his side. 

^^Then you may go on," said Joel in a softer 
tone, for the girl was pretty and had a confiding 
tone to her voice that was likely to make friends 
for her. 

^^That is," he added, ^^if you go on slow. 
This business of makin' a railroad of our street 
has got to be stopped right away, if I fire at 
every wheel that goes by " 

^'And miss it," said Bacon suggestively. 

^^If you hadn't turned I'd a got ye," said Joel. 
''I warn't lookin' for that." 

^^ Look here, Mr. " 

^^Beecher's my name. Yes, same family," 
said he, to save the usual question from being 
asked. 

^^Well, Mr. Beecher, your namesake was a 
fair sort of man," said Bacon quickly; ^^and 
if he'd been here do you know what he would 



232 Cheer Up 



have done? He would have married us. We're 
in an awful hurry. Her father doesn't like me, 
because I'm not rich enough, and we are getting 
away from him." 

^'He comin' up, too? I'll fix his tire!" 

^'No, he's gone by the valley road. Can't 
you help us out? I'll pay the fine. Just show 
us the way to the nearest minister. One up 
here?" 

'^ Please help us!" said the girl in a tone that 
went straight to the old man's heart. 

^^Howoldbeye?" 

^^I'm twenty-one, and Harry's older. We 
have a right " 

^'Only your father won't admit it. Well, ma 
and me run away and never regretted it." He 
rubbed his chin reflectively. ^^ There ain't no 
minister up here now; but there's the Metho- 
dist one down in Swamp Holler." 

^' Jump in and show us the way. I'm not sure 
I know where any one but Mr. Holden lives, and 



Cheer Up 233 

he's on the valley road, and this delay has helped 
Mr. Atherton. Will a check do for the fine?" 

'^ Never mind the fine, if it's a case of life or 
death." 

^^No, it's a case of marriage." 

^'Same thing hundred yea.rs from now," said 
Joel grimly. ^^I'd like to try one of those 
things." He looked at the machine with a 
newly awakened interest. '^It's about two 
miles over to Abiel Pitkins in Swamp Holler. 
Take me there and bring me back, and I'll show 
you the way. You ain't got to hurry. Your 
father'U never think of Pitkins. He's a parson 
in a small way; but a marriage is a marriage." 

Joel uncoupled the ropes, then got in and sat 
down in the front seat with an expression on his 
face midway between sheepishness and de- 

light. 

"Hark!" said Miss Atherton. "Is that a 
machine I hear? Oh, hurry, Harry!" 
A moment later a green touring-car, pro- 



2 34 Cheer Up 

pelled by a square-jawed, white-mustached man, 
appeared at the top of the hill. 

'at is father! It's too late!" 

''You can do it!" said Joel excitedly. "I'll 
show you the way. Let her go. By thunder 
and Mars! the old man can't git yer, if you keep 
cool. This looks like the fastest machine." 

The automobile shot forward so suddenly that 
Joel fell back in his seat. After that he gripped 
the arm. 

"We're gaining on them," said Grace, her 
eyes on her father, who grimly kept his hand on 
the lever of the machine and with set mouth rode 
like fate. 

A mile was made at terrific speed. Farmers 
in the fields and here and there a housewife saw 
the two automobiles fly past, Joel, in the fore- 
most one, looking as if he enjoyed the swift mo- 
tion, and the man in the rear one looking like 
nothing but Nemesis. 

"I can beat him on the level; but I'll have to 



Cheer Up 235 

slow up on the descent. My brake's been act- 
ing out of kilter on hills," said Bacon as they 
approached the place where they were to leave 
the high road and drop into Swamp Hollow. 

^^He won't catch yer," said Joel. And he 
spoke as if he knew what he was talking about. 
''I'm seein' this thing through now, and you'll 
git married, all right. Your father is just about 
exceedin' the speed limit, and I ain't a-goin' to 
stand it much longer." 

When they dropped over the brow of the hill 
Bacon immediately applied the brakes. A mar- 
riage was a marriage; but he could not risk the 
life of his bride-to-be. 

Old Atherton, however, had only one thought: 
to overtake his daughter, no matter what hap- 
pened. 

''He's gaining on us, Harry!" 

"By Godfrey! you're go'n' too fast, old man. 
I'm selectman and justice of the peace, and 
you've got to stop it!" Joel rose in his seat and 



236 Cheer Up 

flashed an open palm on the pursuing father, 
who paid absolutely no attention to it. 

^^You won't, eh? Well, I miss fire some- 
times, but not when I know the course of a 
thing." Joel pulled out the revolver and fired. 

There was a second noise as of an explosion, 
and the right fore wheel of the machine of the 
hot-headed parent flattened down in the dust. 

Atherton continued to move through the air, 
and brought up in the lower limb of a maple 
tree, where he was wedged helpless, yet not 
stunned. 

Grace screamed ; but when her father opened 
his mouth and began to talk vigorous English, 
she was reassured. 

^'We must get him down. I'm afraid he's 
hurt," said she. 

Bacon chuckled. ^^ Grace, don't you know 
when you're being helped by Providence? 
Your father's safe. When you are my wife the 
first thing I'll help you do is to get him down." 



20 w 



Cheer Up 237 

^^He must understand," said Joel, ^^that we 
don't allow autos to make railroads of our high- 
ways. There's Abiel now, comin' out of his 
front door." The machine plunged forward 
like a belated mail-train. ^'Ginger and senna! 
but this is like fiyin' ! If 'twarn't so expensive 
I'd buy one of the pesky things myself. Hi, 
Abiel! Got a job for yer." 




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